Liked Chrome is Bad (chromeisbad.com)
Short story: Google Chrome installs something called Keystone on your computer, which bizarrely hides what it's doing from Activity Monitor and makes your whole computer slow even when Chrome isn't running. Deleting Chrome and Keystone makes your computer way, way faster, all the time.

Via Aaron.

Surprised I’ve not see this in my feeds yet. I’ve certainly noticed that Chrome can sometimes seem to hog resources and energy on macs. I mostly use Safari and Firefox.