Battery drain on a *new* macbook pro 13 2018

Read See how apps affect Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity

Checking the Activity Monitor every once in a while, Chrome is on top using Avg Energy Impact of 20-60.

That's enormous.

Google does not care if it consumes all your Mac's resources. All that matters to Google is that they are continually harvesting your personal information so that they can sell it, a resource-intensive process that uses copious amounts of energy. Google does not care if that means your Mac's battery doesn't last very long, or if your Mac doesn't perform very well. Its mission is complete. If that means you have to buy a new Mac every couple of years, I suppose Apple won't mind either.

So I switched to Safari for the last week - a slight improve(ment).

Merely not using Chrome is insufficient to rid your Mac of Google. It has to be uninstalled according to its instructions.

The following screenshots are from eight year old MacBook Pro whose battery lasts at least 6 hours between recharge cycles. It has never been infected with Google products:

That's what a Mac unaffected by Google looks. It's eight years old. If I used Google I probably would have had to replace this Mac years ago.

It's your Mac though, and your money. Use both as you see fit. If you are required to use Google products I suggest returning your Mac for a full cash refund and buying a Chromebook instead.

I surmise I was not clear. Google Chrome is not just a browser. You cannot install Chrome without installing Google's full suite of additional "helpers" and other processes that run constantly regardless of whether you're actually using Chrome or not. Firefox doesn't do that. Brave doesn't do that. Opera doesn't do that. Unlike Chrome they are just browsers and were not developed for the sole purpose of harvesting, uploading, storing, and selling your personal information.

Activity Monitor's Energy tab tells you all there is to know: a sustained "Avg Energy Impact of 20-60" is enormous. If you want your Mac's battery to last, don't install Google.

... just like anyone else..

I don't.

It seems like if the worlds most popular browser will be the cause for draining half of mac's battery cycle, we should have heard about it a lot more.

I don't know how it's possible to not hear about it. Chrome's energy inefficiency is notorious regardless of the platform—Macs, Windows, Linux—and it's only grown worse over time. Your observation (half of mac's battery cycle) is approximately correct.

It only gets worse as Google pushes updates to your Mac in the background, making it difficult to correlate the sudden onset of poor performance or battery consumption to anything obvious.

You could almost make a case for the fact Apple and Google collude to ensure you're always buying new Macs. Almost. After all Apple gets a lot of money from Google... estimated to be about $10 billion this year alone, just to retain their position as Safari's default search engine. Google didn't get to be as successful as they did by being stupid.

Perhaps you shouldn't use Google to search for those problems. It's not as though it's a secret.