FastestChrome is a productivity extension designed to make your browsing and searches quicker. It features the ability to autoload the next page so that you have uninterrupted scrolling when doing Google searches or reading vertical comic archives or image searches. It also turns any text link into a clickable link, and adds a “related articles” section to Wikipedia. If you used FastestFox for Firefox, then you pretty much know what to expect when installing and working with this extension.

In search results, FastestChrome can do related product searches using Superfish and Amazon, among others, and can include DuckDuckGo info boxes to all search engines. It also fills out search refinements and related shopping results. It can even give you a top bar that has price comparison results across several popular websites.

Highlighting a word and hovering over it on any page will get you a Wikipedia, and (if you check it) IMDB, definitions box to tell you all about whatever it is you’re looking at. However, this doesn’t work well with the Google Dictionary extension, and tends to cancel it out. If you prefer Google Dictionary, be sure to disable the Popup Bubble option in FastestChrome’s settings.

With all the search options turned on, I did a quick search for “pirate boots” just to see what it would bring up. I was actually shocked at how busy it made the Google search page. Between the DuckDuckGo box, the related search refinements line, and the Amazon and Visual search results, I was more than halfway down the first page before I got to the first actual Google result. Hovering over any link (if you have this option enabled) will also show you how many times that particular link has been shared on Facebook and Twitter. dotTech’s home page has been shared 86 times on Facebook, and 41 on Twitter, for example. My personal site has been shared six times on Facebook and once on Twitter. I kind of like being able to see that.

What I didn’t like is all the additions to the search page, and after doing a couple more test searches to see if they got less cluttered (they do, if what you’re searching for doesn’t have any product connotations), I ended up disabling most of those. I’m keeping the autoloading of the next page, though, called Endless Pages in the settings, and the text to link functionality.

Overall, this extension has quite a lot of potential – just a bit too much for me. But, hey, it may be more your style.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 6.8.2

Requires: Chrome

FastestChrome at Chrome Webstore