Google claims the new occlusion feature makes Chrome on Windows 25.8% faster

In October, Google released Chrome 86 and with that they rolled out a new improvement called occlusion to 100% of Windows users. Recently, on the Chromium blog, a report appeared on the data related to the performance benefits of occlusion. These data are collected and aggregated by Google.

In fact, compared to other browsers, Google Chrome has always had the advantage in terms of speed. By enabling occlusion, Google can further enhance the performance of their browser.

For several years now, Chrome has been reducing resource usage by reducing the priority of background tabs and minimized Chrome windows. What Google doesn't do, however, is reduce the priority of tabs that are active in Chrome windows in the background but not minimized. With the new occlusion feature, Chrome was able to reduce the priority of tabs hidden behind other Windows programs.

Here are the data that Google statistics after a few months of implementing occlusion:

1. Boot up from 8.5% to 25.8% faster.
2. Reduce GPU memory usage by 3.1%.
3. The total number of renderer frames is 20.4% less.
4. 4.5% reduction in the number of clients experiencing renderer issues.
5. 3.0% improvement in first time input lag
6. 6.7% improvement in first-time contentful paint rendering and greatest contentful paint. Contentful paint is the biggest piece of content on a web page.

For Google, it's very important to constantly find innovative ways to improve Chrome's performance. According to StatCounter, Chrome currently accounts for 66.35% of the desktop browser market share. However, if you are too complacent, Chrome's market share can be reduced quickly before the competition of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Safari .

With faster startup and added occlusion, Google has a better chance of retaining Chome users.

Micah Soto

Update 10 December 2021