Fastest browser in the world

There is a speed war on the web. Browsers compete on many fronts; security, standards support, features and speed. Most people are aware of which major browser fails on three of these, but one of them is still open for grabs. Speed.

Many organizations and users try to claim that their browser is the fastest. Opera and Firefox users are quite vocal on the subject, but none of them can actually show any research to back up their statements, usually just saying "X takes way longer than Y to start" or "my friend uses X and it is much slower on his computer than Y is on mine". Those that did try more than one usually say "X just felt faster than Y when I tried them" (although this may refer to familiarity with the individual user interface - something that I do not cover here).

As a final result, Safari 4 is the winner, followed by Chrome 1.0, Firefox 3.5, opera 9.65 and IE 8 as the slowest.

Well, I've had enough of these unfounded arguments. I present my research. This is an honest, unbiased view (or as unbiased as I can be). Unlike most people, I not only test all the browsers, I test them all on the same computer as each other. This, I hope, gives an accurate comparison, not only of the browsers compared with each other.