It'd be more interesting to see an article comparing Chrome to Firefox 3.1b3, which recently came out. See https://developer.mozilla.org/devnews/index.php/2009/03/12/f.... You'll notice that one of the improvements in b3 is performance increase in the javascript engine.
You're right, though, when you say that it isn't just about the javascript engine's speed. So maybe we should wait until Chrome becomes a full-featured browser before we start touting its unbelievable performance. Remember when Firefox went 2.0 and one of the biggest complaints (that I remember) was how it had become bloated and wasn't as fast? Guaranteed the same will eventually happen to Chrome.
The b3 improvements are incremental, I doubt you'll see that big a difference in benchmarks.
There wasn't a whole lot of change from Firefox 1.5->2.0, Firefox 3.0 was the big refresh. I don't actually remember that much complaining about poor performance in Firefox 2.0 relative to 1.x.
What do you feel are missing features in Chrome that actually matter to people that you feel with materially impact performance significantly?
You're right, though, when you say that it isn't just about the javascript engine's speed. So maybe we should wait until Chrome becomes a full-featured browser before we start touting its unbelievable performance. Remember when Firefox went 2.0 and one of the biggest complaints (that I remember) was how it had become bloated and wasn't as fast? Guaranteed the same will eventually happen to Chrome.