Report: Chrome is the buggiest browser beta

Google has said that it plans to soon to take Chrome out of beta and release it officially, but it better squash plenty of bugs before it does it. A software testing service has found that Chrome's beta is buggier than both the beta of Firefox 3.1 and Internet Explorer 8, with nearly 300 bugs that need to be fixed.

uTest put beta of all three browsers to the test, and here's what they found:

• Chrome has 297 bugs, with 12% of them showstoppers.
• Firefox 3.1 beta has 207 bugs, with 24% of them showstoppers.
• Internet Explorer 8 has 168 bugs, with 9% of them showstoppers.

The service didn't say which beta versions it tested, but for Firefox it was almost certainly beta 1, because the testing was done during a single week in November, and beta 2 had yet to be released. More than 1,300 testers from 68 countries participated in the testing.

There's more bad news for Chrome as well --- testers rated it as their least-preferred browser of the three. Some 55% said Firefox 3.1 was their preferred browser, 30% said Internet Explorer 8 was, and only 6% prefer Chrome.

As for which is the most usable, the testers rated Firefox 3.1 as being the most usable browser, with 81% reporting its usability as fair or good, and 16% rating it as excellent. For Chrome, the numbers were 74% rating its usability as fair or good, and 10% rating it excellent. Some 87% of users said Internet Explorer usability was fair or good, with none rating it excellent.

The key takeaway for Google: Fix those bugs before you release the browser.

For details about the testing, see this press release from uTest.