Microsoft caught cheating on browser test?

Interesting little tidbit popped up today on my radar screen: Microsoft showed off IE 11 last week using a JavaScript benchmark of its own making -- Lawn Mark -- and was outed for possible cheating by using a snippet of JS code that only IE supports.  As if to prove this, a Chromium engineer edited the code, and now all four browsers (IE, Chrome, Firefox and Opera -- sorry Safari, but I don't have you installed on my computer) have comparable speeds -- lo and behold however, Chrome comes out on top.

Well of course, I had to go run through some standard benchmarks, then to top if off, add Google's own Octane benchmark to prove a point about Microsoft's shenanigans, and how the only way to score browsers is by independent sites.

HTML5Test results:

• 473 points -- Chrome 28.0.1500.71 / Windows 7
• 404 points -- Opera 12.16 / Windows 7
• 395 points -- Firefox 22.0 / Windows 7
• 320 points -- IE 10.0.9200.16635 / Windows 7

SunSpider 1.0 JavaScript benchmark results:

• 126 ms -- IE 10.0.9200.16635 / Windows 7
• 183 ms -- Chrome 28.0.1500.71 / Windows 7
• 191 ms -- Firefox 22.0 / Windows 7
• 220 ms -- Opera 12.16 / Windows 7

Browsermark benchmark results:

• 5492 -- Chrome 28.0.1500.71 / Windows 7
• 3353 -- Firefox 22.0 / Windows 7
• 2629 -- Opera 12.16 / Windows 7
• 2553 -- IE 10.0.9200.16635 / Windows 7

Octane* (JavaScript) benchmark results:

• 15352 -- Chrome 28.0.1500.71 / Windows 7
• 13083 -- Firefox 22.0 / Windows 7
• 5625 -- IE 10.0.9200.16635 / Windows 7
• 5372 -- Opera 12.16 / Windows 7

Bottom line is, Chrome really is the best browser out there.

*-- Octane was written by Google to benchmark Chrome with JavaScript.  Alone, it might not tell you enough about how well a browser works.