Notably that's a prime google web property, and I don't doubt that they made sure that it's snappy on chrome - which says more about google maps than about chro

Notably that's a prime google web property, and I don't doubt that they made sure that it's snappy on chrome - which says more about google maps than about chrome, in all likelihood. For comparison, on my machine maps.bing.com is about as fast in FF as in chrome (panning around is about as snappy), whereas IE11 is much faster (it's a little snappier in gmaps too). In other words: IE on bing does notably better than IE on google; and chrome on google does noticably better than chrom on bing. It's not hugely surprising - all three browsers can be quite snappy if you profile and ensure you miss various slow paths, and of course MS + google make sure their mapping services work well in their own browser.