Google Chrome, Day 2

Seems that almost every story submitted to Slashdot last night in some way involved Google's Chrome that we started talking about yesterday. Dotan Cohen noted that according to Clicky Chrome has hit 3% browser share. Since Google has decided to release Chrome only for Windows, I now share for you 3 reviews written by others: the first comes from alexy2k, the second from mildsiete, and the third from oli4uk. They all seem to feature various opinions, charts, and screenshots demonstrating various exciting points.

Comments

Chrome is spyware!

[Anonymous Coward]

Install it and 'Google Update' is silently installed along with it with no apparent way of turning it off besides regedit/msconfig. So much for "Don't be Evil".

Google spying on you

[edelholz]

Apparently, every installation of Chrome gets an unique id (sorry, German only) and, once you've signed into your Google account ONCE, the unique id gets connected with your account and you'll always be traceable back to your Google account, even if you're not logged in.

That's a showstopper. But I'm hoping for a spy-free version to be out soon, the beauty of open source!

Re:Google spying on you

[Simon (S2)]

I posted this earlier today, but I feel I have to post this again, as it is really important people know what they get in to using this browser:

In metrics_service.cc [chromium.org]
it sends everything you do in the toolbar to
static const char kMetricsURL[] =

        "https://toolbarqueries.google.com/firefox/metrics/collect";
It collects everything and sends it to google servers, on startup and on shutdown.

// Ongoing log typically
// contain very detailed records of user activities (ex: opened tab, closed
// tab, fetched URL, maximized window, etc.) In addition, just before an
// ongoing log is closed out, a call is made to gather memory statistics. Those
// memory statistics are deposited into a histogram, and the log finalization
// code is then called. In the finalization, a call to a Histogram server
// acquires a list of all local histograms that have been flagged for upload
// to the UMA server.
//
// When the browser shuts down, there will typically be a fragment of an ongoing
// log that has not yet been transmitted. At shutdown time, that fragment
// is closed (including snapshotting histograms), and converted to text. Note
// that memory stats are not gathered during shutdown, as gathering *might* be
// too time consuming. The textual representation of the fragment of the
// ongoing log is then stored persistently as a string in the PrefServices, for
// potential transmission during a future run of the product.

WHAT THE FUCK. Keep ff ftw.
If your privacy means nothing to you just use Chrome.

local anecdote

[pohl]

In my office, there are several windows developers who were excited to try Chrome yesterday - one enthusiastically declaring that he was going to uninstall his other browser as soon as he got home. What struck me about this is that these are people who would never, in a million years, lift a finger to try Safari/Windows - yet here they are drooling over how snappy a WebKit-based browser is. The prospect of increased WebKit adoption makes me happy.

Re:local anecdote

[Zoidbergo]

I would characterize Chrome as "Safari for Windows done right."

There were massive mistakes Apple made (out of arrogance or incompetence, I'm not sure), when releasing Safari for Windows:

- Apple style Font rendering. Having to switch your eyes between Safari's anti-aliasing and ClearType on a regular basis starts to hurt your eyes, one seems blurry in comparison to the other.
- Safari didn't follow many of the standard windows app behaviors, another snafu. You can't stuff OS X app behaviors down the throats of Windows users, and vice versa.
- It also had an incredibly slow startup time. (Although it would render extremely fast)

Contrast this to Chrome, which renders text using ClearType and windows font rendering, behaves like a windows app, starts up really fast.

It's not even like I'm bashing Apple for a bad port. iTunes for windows was ported really well, it follows (for the most part, except menus) the windows UI conventions and font rendering, so it feels more like a Windows app.

(By the way, I'm primarily a Mac user and use Safari regularly on the Mac)

Things I like, Things I don't

[Zerth]

The inspect element tool is awesome, lets you see the tree and go to any element you can right click on.

Killable tabs, I open tons of new tabs/windows in any browser I use and I hate it when one crashes and takes out a dozen pages I had open earlier to read later and then have to grep and guess through my history. This makes my day

When you search, it puts little marks on the scroll bar where results are. That's neat.

The tweaked tab system is great. Create new windows from tabs, drag tabs between windows, consolidate windows into tabs.

On the other hand

I really miss scroll-click and smooth scrolling. But it isn't the end of the world.

While I like having tabs on top, having the File/options/etc WIMP standards under that little button to the right of the address bar is kinda weird.

It's beta. It's very beta. Somewhere above "everybody else's beta" and but slightly below the usual "Google beta" quality.

I turned the awesome bar off.

But I still want it to do math for me.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[E IS mC(Square)]

It's a good start.
But in my 10 mins of usage, I have just realized how Firefox has spoiled my browsing habits!

Few points so far (remember - just 10 mins of use):
1. Cursor is going missing in Slashdot reply box if it is at the beginning of the line.
2. There are ads on ./!!
3. Great debugging tools for developers built-in.
4. Unlike Firefox, no option for smooth-scrolling (I find it mandatory for large pages - especially on ./)

One click install????

[argent]

OK, I went to install Google Chrome, and the "download and install" button started running an external application without any prompts. Needless to say I immediately cancelled it and started digging through the source to see what the fox is going on.

function installApp() {
    if (isOneClickEnabled() && _GU_isOneClickAvailable()) {
      installViaOneClick();
    } else if (isClickOnceEnabled() && _GU_isClickOnceAvailable()) {
      installViaClickOnce();
    } else {
      installViaDownload();
    }
}

I am sure that some Google software that I installed in the past has given google this capability, rather than this being some kind of trust relationship between Mozilla and Google. I'm even sure that at some point I clicked "OK" to some question that said it was OK for them to do X, Y, and Z, and that included this capability.

Regardless...

I don't think this kind of backdoor is even vaguely sane, no matter how "non evil" Google may be. If this capability exists, then the possibility exists for other folks who aren't so "non evil".

This is something I'd expect from Microsoft.

And if they could slip something like that past a fellow as paranoid as me, they sure didn't provide nearly enough disclosure.

So...

What's going on. Is this something in Google Gears? In some other Google tool? I guess I'll have to start dissecting my browser and figure out exactly what the hell they're doing.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[teh kurisu]

You obviously missed Chrome's, which never writes that private information to your hard drive in the first place. Much more secure. Safari also does this, has done for a while.

Re:Non-Tech Percent of Web Traffic from Chrome

[rsclient]

Actually, no, it started much earlier than that :-)

Once upon a time, they made "web browsers". Well, actually, no, what they made was hardware: a hunk of electronics, a keyboard, and a CRT (like a monitor from the days before LCDs). And they called them "terminals", and wired them to the computers. And the software on the computer would sniff the terminal to figure out what type it was so that the correct HTML (I mean, "escape sequences") could be sent. Esc [ 4 m, for example, was "bold". Esc [ 0 m meant make it plain again.

Only it turns out there was one popular terminal, the VT100 from the ever-present Digital Equipment Corporation ("DEC". Later they called themselves "Digital"). (Only it wasn't actually popular; the actual popular version was the VT102). So every minor terminal maker -- and there were hundreds -- would lie, and claim to be a VT100.

How do I know this? Because I worked on RS/1, an interactive statistical package and had to support those hundreds of terminals. And what a pain it was.

People don't get it

[Itchyeyes]

In the past 24 hours since Chrome launched, the thing that I've found most interesting has been the range of reaction from people around the Web. In a nutshell the reaction can be pretty evenly divided between people who "get it" and people who don't. If you think that Google's purpose for Chrome has anything to do with improving UI or grabbing browser market share then you're in the camp that doesn't get it.

Chrome is more or less a reference design for other browser developers, hence the reason Google is putting so much emphasis on it being open source. There's no money in it for Google to be giving out browsers. What Google is interested in is increasing the capability of the average browser in order to allow them to serve up more robust web-based content for more revenue.

Re:Incognito mode actually isn't really so...

[E IS mC(Square)]

Google still has your browsing history nicely tracked, stored on their computer, available for subpoena etc.

Do they say that in that link you provided? In fact, the link says something opposite. And they make it pretty clear what is sent to Google, when and how to disable it.

If you want to continue with FUD, that's fine by me, but you can help yourself by not weakening your own arguments.

Re:Noticably the fastest browser.

[dannannan]

Not just Office -- it's the whole desktop environment. Chrome is Google's way of telling everyone that the web really is ready for primetime app development. The roadblocks of the past, like poor performance, second class UI, hacky little scripts taping everything together, etc. are not fundamental limitations imposed by the web; they were shortcomings of the legacy web browsers.

Google is trying to get good, self-respecting developers to target the web with their apps, even for traditionally "local" apps.

Look at some of the mainstays of the traditional local app platform. Chrome's approach to tabbed browsing is one step away from replacing the Windows Taskbar. Your app gets listed in the Chrome Task Manager, too. A lot like Windows Task Manager, eh? Except it's more useful. Even the hotkey to open is simpler. SHIFT+ESC instead of CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.