A Closer Look At Chromium and Browser Security

GhostX9 writes "Tom's Hardware's continuing series on computing security has an interview with Adam Barth and Collin Jackson, members of Stanford University's Web Security Group and members of the team that developed Chromium, the open-source core behind Google Chrome. The interview goes into detail regarding the sandboxing approach unique to Chromium, comparisons between the browser and its competition, and web security in general."

Comments

FFX all the way

[switch.au]

FFX has cute logo tough :)

Re:FFX all the way

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Final Fantasy 10 *does* have a cute logo. What, Yuna doesn't count as a logo? What about Lulu?

Good

[maz2331]

These are all great ideas, and I hope Firefox and/or MSIE pick up on them, simply because I can't stand the Chrome UI.

Sorry, but that thing just isn't what a browser is supposed to be.

The uhderlying technology can be the greatest ever, but if the interface sucks, well, I won't use it.

Re:Good

[mhousser]

I love the interface! What I don't love, however, are the millions of ads that I forgot existed. I'll move to Chrome the minute it supports plugins and AdBlocker is ported to it. Chrome's plugin API will be finished later this year.

Re:Good

[AdmiralXyz]

Um... this is an opinion that many other people definitely do not share. I for one love the ability to focus on the web content, rather than the mess of toolbars to be found on other browsers.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It supports greasemonkey scripts if you append --enable-user-scripts to its shortcut. And theres a script for it that works exactly like adblock.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The uhderlying technology can be the greatest ever, but if the interface sucks, well, I won't use it.

That describes in a nutshell why OS/2 never caught on big.

Re:Good

[Genocaust]

I like others, also love the UI. It took some getting used to over Firefox, but I do like the clean look of being able to focus on actual content -- not the browser itself.
As to Adblock, yeah, wow, there are a lot of ads out there I didn't even know existed! Using OpenDNS I manage to block most of them just by domain through their blacklist service, though. It's not perfect, but better than nothing for now!

Re:Good

[cryptoluddite]

Chromifox makes firefox look a lot like Chrome. Chrome is a nice toy, but it's UI is pretty lacking when you want to do something like maximize screen space on a 1024x600 screen.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

UI is the easy part. I'm sure Google will allow skinning or something in the future, and if not then someone should add it to the source - it is open afterall.

Re:Good

[i.of.the.storm]

There is actually something handy called AdSweep that works with Chrome, but it's not regex based like Adblockplus so it seems to only work on sites that are built into it. It's better than nothing, I guess, but there are still about 300 other things that Firefox does for me that Chrome is far from doing, and a lot of them hinge on a good extension platform. I just don't think it can get better than XUL/js for extension writing.

Re:Good

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe instead of complaining about a browser that displays ads, you might want to stop visiting websites that have intrusive and overwhelming ads.

I use Slashdot and Chrome and don't see any ads because I'm a subscriber, but even if I wasn't, the low number of ads here is one reason I like it.

Re:Good

[v(*_*)vvvv]

I agree the interface is lacking, but that is why I can whole heartedly recommend it to all my novice friends and family. It is secure, it is simple, and it does exactly what people who know little about computers want to do - get online and go to a specific web site.

Gmail is also great. Simple, secure, and uncluttered. Create an app icon and add it to the start menu, and you have a very simple email solution. The only problem I have though is their grouping of threads, which is unnecessary. That should be a lab feature if any. And why can't they just add folders? Who cares which is better. Some people just want folders, not labels, and if its so easy to give it to them, denying it is selfish. Just give it up, and give people what they want!

Re:Good

[drolli]

Insightful? The OS/2 interface was extremely consistent and extremely configurable. e.g. make a template for a file which containe certain context menu options. etc...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Horrible UI? Beats Firefox hands down.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always felt that the OS/2 UI was far superior to the Windows versions of the time (3.x/95). Heck, it makes more sense to me then Windows Vista/7 does.

Re:Good

[Anpheus]

F11.

It works on Chrome's Dev branch, which any self-respecting slashdotter would use to provide useful feedback to the developers of Chrome.

Re:Good

[similar_name]

My biggest complaint about the interface is it unnecessarily creates its own window/title bar. As such I can't use RBtray on it to keep Chrome windows 'always on top'. Which I like to do so I can stick a hulu window in the corner of my screen while I'm browsing.

Re:Good

[Jurily]

It supports greasemonkey scripts if you append --enable-user-scripts to its shortcut.

And now you have two problems.

Re:Good

[cbrocious]

If you use Privoxy, the majority of those ads will go away, and you can do custom filtering for fun and profit easily.

Re:Good

[cryptoluddite]

In firefox I can go full screen, but still keep the URL bar, so I know what site I'm on. I can get a menu bar by pressing Alt once. I can put the NoScript button on the URL bar. I can even put a button to toggle fullscreen, since it's often easier to trackpad to a button than find F11 on a small non-backlit keyboard. Or firefox can drop down this UI when the cursor is at the top.

Chrome can do none of these things, even in the current beta version. The UI in many ways is restrictive and lacks many niceties. You can still like it and prefer it, that's fine, but let's be honest. Perhaps I should have said "maximize space while still being usable", but some common sense is in order here.

Re:Good

[coryking]

UI is the easy part.

Yeah, right. If the UI was the easy part, why do almost all UI's suck?

skinning

If you think skins are gonna fix a UI, I've got news for you. Having the ability to add girls sitting on the hoods of of cars wearing tightly clad bikinis does not make a good UI.

Re:Good

[voidphoenix]

Gmail is also great. Simple, secure, and uncluttered. Create an app icon and add it to the start menu, and you have a very simple email solution. The only problem I have though is their grouping of threads, which is unnecessary. That should be a lab feature if any. And why can't they just add folders? Who cares which is better. Some people just want folders, not labels, and if its so easy to give it to them, denying it is selfish. Just give it up, and give people what they want!

Labels can work _exactly_ like folders if that's all you want. The main difference is that a message can be in more than one "folder" if you need it to be.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

For the majority of browser security as of late, JavaScript seems to be the culprit of causing malware to even professional IT people due to browsing habits and such. Chrome will and had made this far worse by not allowing a user to pick web scripts to run. I use Firefox with NoScript addon, which gives options to enable JavaScript individually on page or by an icon that reveals all sites with scripts. Since this has eliminated virtually all browser vulnerabilities (except for user stupidity), I dislike all or nothing browsers.

This is the easiest reason to explain to switch to the Firefox browser with NoScript addon. Yeah, it becomes easy to get people away from Chrome too.

Note: You can pry IT admins away from Chrome if you mention how many additional services google uses when not using Chrome and how it wants to call home often.

Re:Good

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Right. Except such explaining and adjusting is precisely what is inconvenient to someone who already learned how to use folders over a long period of time, and isn't very competent with computers.

Labels can work _exactly_ like folders if that's all you want. The main difference is that a message can be in more than one "folder" if you need it to be.

You might be surprised at how hard this sentence is for some people to comprehend.

Re:Good

[weicco]

I read Playing in the sandbox - page and I really don't see what is so great in there compared to IE on Vista. Same NTFS Access Control Lists are used as any other Windows application. And I'm not 100% sure about this, but doesn't Chrome run on user privileges when IE (on Vista) uses more restricted privileges?

My understanding is that you can't totally sandbox browser unless you do it on kernel level like FreeBSD jail does. And even then browser must be able to access user files if user wants to upload something to the internet, and cookies of course.

Allthough I've been known to be wrong :)

Re:Good

[malkir]

So you're just going to open a huge security hole in the process? You shouldn't have to sacrifice!

Re:Good

[blind biker]

Firefox won't pick up on those ideas in the foreseable future, perhaps never. I hope you enjoy your IE experience!

(for the record, I think the Crhome UI is excellent. Nothing superfluous, and rather pleasant to look at)

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

ie. Spread FUD and then people don't use it.

I don't know any other large software company that spreads FUD about open source operating systems and who regularly gets criticised for doing so.

Chrome installs the Google Updater - an open source app that typically used 600KB of RAM and is a benefit to users who aren't tech savvy as it updates all Google programmes without user involvement.

Re:Good

[Bert64]

Skinning seems to hurt performance, a lot...
Take any app where skinning was added later, and compare the old and new versions side by side... windows media player is a good example since it would leave the old unskinnable version installed when you installed the skinnable version 7, on a machine in those days (p3/600) i had a bunch of video files which would play fine in the old player, and skip when using the new one.

Re:Good

[Bert64]

I used to run a browser in a chroot on linux, partly because i had a 64bit system but needed some 32bit plugins (java, flash) and partly for the security benefit...
In terms of user files, you simply leave them in the sandbox, the host system can access the sandbox but the sandbox can't access the host which is how it should be.

Re:Good

[Bert64]

And the google updater (alongside the apple updater, adobe updated, and whatever else updater) you have running only exist to get around a flaw in windows - the lack of a consistent package management system such as apt. If you install enough apps with updaters on windows they will eventually bog your system down real badly, and start using your bandwidth when you least expect it.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop looking up gay porn and you wont get ads

fuckwit

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 2 features of chrome that have annoyed me to the point of recently switching back to Firefox.

1. When you scroll it scrolls like half a page at a time, rather than 3 lines at a time like every other browser. There is a setting in windows for how many lines an app should scroll when you scroll the mouse - why doesn't chrome follow this?

2. Also have you noticed that when you close chrome, any downloads get cancelled and there's no way to resume them without restarting the download. And the only way to restart them is to right click, copy the link, then paste that link back in the address bar.

Firefox is a little slower (but not much) but it works. Please fix these things Google/chromium team!

Re:Good

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Get bfilter, you can run it with adblock filters, stops 98% of ads.

Re:Good

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Since Chrome was the only browser left standing in the Pwn2Own contest, i think its pretty obvious that their sandboxing is vastly superior to IE.

Re:Good

[maxume]

Yeah, but neither one is as bad as herpes.

Re:Good

[dave420]

Don't visit sites with adverts, and you're set. But I guess you think it's fine to visit sites that you want to visit, and not have to see adverts which pay for the content you clearly want. Lovely.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome's superior safety comes from the independence between tabs :

- Each tab is a separate process (i.e no memory sharing with other tabs)
- Each tab runs it's own copy of JavaScript

The process-per-tab design also has the major advantage that if one web site is slow or hanging it won't affect the other tabs at all as it does in most other browsers where the whole browser can lock up while a slow page is loading.

Re:Good

[julesh]

So you're just going to open a huge security hole in the process? You shouldn't have to sacrifice!

OK, let's here it: why is user scripting a security hole?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Pwn2own used a beta version of IE.

Still, I recently tried IE8 and found one thing that was highly annoying. I turned off the command bar, but it has no way to turn it back on. Right click context menu doesn't work on the toolbars and the option to turn it back on in the view menu is greyed out. This is a huge bug and I'm not sure how it was missed in QA.

Re:Good

[asdf7890]

OK, let's here it: why is user scripting a security hole?

With early versions of GreaseMonkey, the way the user scripts were applied to pages would allow the page to affect easily the GM in ways that could lead to cross-site attack vectors.

That is why GM had a fairly complete redesign around the middle of 2005, remove the issue(s) that affected all scripts, but individual scripts can still be vulnerable depending on their design - hence you should be careful not to let a script apply globally for security reasons as well as efficiency ones. For a decent description of the problems with earlier GM versions and problems that you can still create for yourself in the latest versions, this article does a decent job.

The other major problem with user scripting is using scripts from other sources without performing an exhaustive code review first. How do you know that the script you have just enabled isn't subject to one of the flaws? How do you know it isn't intentionally malicious? There have been several cases of this in the past, hence the warning message before you add a script to GM in recent versions and the warning message that appeared on userscipts.org for some time (as malicious scripts were found in their archive).

Like many things, user scripting isn't a problem if both programmers and users are educated, careful and care. There lies the problem.

I use GM myself, with scripts of my own devising or those from elsewhere that I have sufficiently reviewed, but I would not recommend it (or equivalents) to the general populous as they do not need any further ways to dig themselves into a malware riddled hole.

Re:Good

[evanspw]

when the preferences can set fonts that override the fonts specified in the page (which firefox can do) then i will be happy with chrome. fucked if i'm going to look at some dipshit's site in Times...

Re:Good

[jonaskoelker]

openbox --replace &

:p

Re:Good

[anss123]

I tried OS/2 Warp4 recently and hated it. The whole menu bar on top is cluttered, glad it never caught on.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

User scripts have capabilities that are a strict subset of those that other Firefox extensions have, or even those of normal installed software.

So if you don't recommend user scripts for the general populace, you *certainly* shouldn't recommend extensions or other software.

Re:Good

[lgw]

Labels can work _exactly_ like folders if that's all you want.

You can use labels in GMail to create subfolders? How do you do that?

Re:Good

[lgw]

That's a very interesting point - I'm not sure that apt is the right model, but why am I not updating all of my commercial software through the add/remove programs UI? Or perhaps instead through Microsoft Update, since I go there every second Tuesday anyhow. Microsoft has clearly found a way to patch arbitrary apps, as most MS products now update through Microsoft Update.

Re:Good

[ksd1337]

Why would a company who makes most its profit on ads willingly allow users of its browser to subvert its main source of money?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It is fine. If those sites don't want people "stealing" their bandwidth by not viewing their ads, they should move to a subscription model or just password their site.

It's my computer, it's my browser. I have a right to alter any content that gets displayed to me.

Re:Good

[jspraul]

Use ReplayOnTop instead (Vista only?)

Re:Good

[similar_name]

I couldn't find this, can you point me to a site. I'm using XP (when I'm not on some Linux distro)

Re:Good

[weicco]

Hi. Thanks for the reply. I'm not really familiar with sandboxing technology and your reply cleared things up a bit.

But still if we go back to Windows (I don't know much about *nis OSes) even if you are running in the sandbox, you would able to use Win32 API, right? Now if you are running browser with user credentials, like Chrome/Chromium does, you are able to access plenty of stuff through Win32 API. This, of course, would need a sophisticated attack but in theory I think it is possible. Now even if you are restricted from accessing files that are not in your sandbox you are still able to access other processes/windows in the system. I once wrote a little piece of software that invaded other process' memory and ran stuff in it's context using Win32 API. It required admin privileges though but almost every XP is ran as admin.

But again, I don't know how sandboxing is done in Chromium, how "deep" it is and so on, and I don't know if such a sophisticated attack is possible through browser.

I'm not really sure what my question is here... maybe its just idle speculation :)

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Use AdSweep.
Probably the first useful plugin for Chrome.
And, yes, I said plugin. It might be a little confusing to install, but it's great when you do.
http://www.adsweep.org/

Re:Good

[Pechkin000]

I love the interface! What I don't love, however, are the millions of ads that I forgot existed. I'll move to Chrome the minute it supports plugins and AdBlocker is ported to it. Chrome's plugin API will be finished later this year.

Just use privoxy http://www.privoxy.org/ Works great and you can configure it quite easily to block just what you want blocked. It will do the same for IE if for some strange reason you want to use that POS.

Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[blahbooboo]

Srware Iron is Chrome compiled without all the Google spyware crap and it has adblock built in.

I LOVE IT! Firefox (all versions) is sooooo slow compared to Chrome/Iron.

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[Anonymous Coward]

I just used that, went to the Slashdot Home page and began scrolling up and down, which made my computer lagged. CPU usage spiked heaps.

It's a good idea, and I hope they can improve it, but for now, it's not as good.

So alas I will continue to run both Chrome (for gmail and gcal) and FireFox (for everything else).

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[sortius_nod]

So what about its adblock, the thing doesn't render pages correctly. From what I can tell it is a badly compiled version of chrome.

When they get it right, then I might think about using it... uninstall time.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[blahbooboo]

I just used that, went to the Slashdot Home page and began scrolling up and down, which made my computer lagged. CPU usage spiked heaps.

It's a good idea, and I hope they can improve it, but for now, it's not as good.

So alas I will continue to run both Chrome (for gmail and gcal) and FireFox (for everything else).

Weird, works perfectly for me.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[blahbooboo]

So what about its adblock, the thing doesn't render pages correctly. From what I can tell it is a badly compiled version of chrome.

When they get it right, then I might think about using it... uninstall time.

I get some weird font smoothing occassionally on Slashdot, otherwise works perfectly for me. It's so blazing fast when I go back to Firefox I am shocked how agonizingly slow the browser is to render pages...

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[msimm]

I'm sure this has been pointed out else where, but thanks for the tip. It's a nice browser without the crap.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[mcrbids]

rware Iron is Chrome compiled without all the Google spyware crap and it has adblock built in.

Unfortunately, they don't have a download in RPM or source form, so I can't install it on my Fedora Core 10 laptop.

Without *nix support, Chrome(ium) is a non-starter.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the link man. I'm sick of firefox cause of its slowness, but I was also getting sick of Chrome, so this should be a good alternative.

Does anyone have the following problems I have with Chrome?

(1) It freezes up continually, and when it does freeze up, it effects the entire computer.

(2) When accidently clicking on a PDF link the entire thing crashes, and computer freezes up.

I love chrome cause of its speed, but goddamn. The amount of restarts of my computer I've had with it I'm seriously looking for another browser (NOT firefox).

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect - has source code on download page.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[blahbooboo]

Thanks for the link man. I'm sick of firefox cause of its slowness, but I was also getting sick of Chrome, so this should be a good alternative.

Does anyone have the following problems I have with Chrome?

(1) It freezes up continually, and when it does freeze up, it effects the entire computer.

(2) When accidently clicking on a PDF link the entire thing crashes, and computer freezes up.

I love chrome cause of its speed, but goddamn. The amount of restarts of my computer I've had with it I'm seriously looking for another browser (NOT firefox).

Are you using Adobe Acrobat for PDFs? That's likely your problem and not the browser.

Uninstall that crap and use Foxit PDF Reader instead.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[JackCroww]

Mod parent up. Foxit is light-years better than Acrobat.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[smartbei]

This actually happens to me using FireFox - though perhaps due to the computer having a decent processor (Core 2 Duo) it is fast enough that it isn't a bother.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[lorenzino]

WONTFIX

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[Eighty7]

Are you using the current version 3.08, i think? I've tested it on my two computers & I honestly can't see a difference. I had to load js animations at chromeexperiments to see a difference.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[blahbooboo]

Using the 3.1b3 firefox. Pages are instantly rendered in Chrome, Firefox takes forever. I see this on multiple computers.

Javascript performance doesn't matter, its the engine rendering speed that is the differentiator.

Re:Adblock for Chrome -- Use SwWare Iron "Chrome"

[Ian Alexander]

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

It's the last two download links. Good luck compiling it on F10 since it looks like a Windows app...

You can't stand the Chrome UI!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

And neither can I. Rob Malda (aka Cmdtaco) is not what many would consider "the ideal candidate" for a dot-com start-up. He started his career as a C++ coder for a major manufacturer, but then quit to pursue a mathematics degree in Canada. That didn't quite do it for him either, as he then dropped out to pursue something far more interesting: canoe from Calgary to New Orleans. But after 1,200+ miles of rowing, his journey ended in Minneapolis with a cracked butt and a frozen river. Temporarily, of course, as he plans to pick up and continue south someday soon.

All that said, Malda was pretty excited when he received his first response to all the resumes he'd been sending out to various tech companies. He immediately called back to schedule an interview and was pleasantly surprised at how flexible the interviewer was: Malda could "stop by any time."

After shaving his pubic area smooth and putting on his interview clothes (leather pants, leather boots and leather vest, steel nipple rings and nothing else), Malda hopped on a bus, transferred to a few other busses, and, after almost two hours, finally reached his destination. It was a residential apartment complex that had obviously seen better days.

When he knocked on the door of "Suite 318," Malda was greeted by Michael Simms, a spry-looking man in his 50's with glasses precariously perched on his conical head and a face a few days past shaved. Upon entering the squalid apartment, the first thing Malda noticed was the rotten stench of ejaculate-stained underwear haphazardly strewn across the living room. There and a blue tarp hung over the south-facing window, blocking the sun and a view of the Mississippi river. "For my little get-togethers" Michael Simms explained using quote marks with his fingers. "Can't have the neighbors looking in now can we?" The second was Michael Simms sitting down on a computer, firing up a popular MMO. He was completey nude. Malda stared unabashedly at the sight; Michael's tumescence was incredible.

"You see this," Simms said, avatar running towards the closed city gate, "when you get to the door you have to wait while the game loads the next area. You should just be able to see out through it."

Taking this as the "technical" portion of the interview, Malda started to explain about how he would implement dynamically loading regions. Malda was very clear that, while he had never written something like that before, he was certainly aware of the basic concepts involved.

"Now, look. He just runs right through the tree. Right through it! You see that?" He harrumphed and turned toward Malda with a look like someone died. "Motherfucker! I'll fucking kill you!" Rob shouted.

"Now now, Rob, that will never do. You'll suck my penis to erection and then take it in your sweet little anus until it's time to dump a load of Uncle my special sauce down your slick throat, and you'll like it!"

With this Simms cocked the hammer of his gun and pointed it at Rob's mouth and began forcing his jaw open with the barrel as he poured the JÃffgermeister, thick and dark and brown, into Rob's mouth. He trickled some onto his bush and penis for good measure and jammed his thin cock into Rob's mouth. Rob took it to the hilt.

"That's a good little faggot. You take all of Uncle Eric's junk and you like it!" Eric said as he began pumping his cock in and out of Rob's mouth. Simms's bulbous white gut hovered menacingly over Rob's face like a full moon and his ruddy pubes tickled Rob's nose. The gun barrel wavered at Rob's eyes.

Rob moaned as Simms grunted his pleasures into the back of Rob's throat.

"Now Rob, I want you to look me in the eyes. Rob's beady eyes connected with Michael's pale blue irises, tears welling in his eyelids as Simms's crotch continued its assault. "I have with me a funnel, Rob, and you're going to take it in your ass. This old cock of mine needs a little lube and we're going to pack your rec-room full of something quite slippery!" Simms said as his eyes grew wide. He shook his

Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Anonymous Coward]

When I go to the main google page in IE 8, it has this huge icon telling me to use Chrome in the top right corner. When I go there in FF, its not there. Is google singling out IE users?

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Tacvek]

Perhaps. My guess is they have logic like the following:

If you use Firefox, you probably already have heard about Chrome, and have decided not to switch. If you use IE, you probably have no idea that other browsers even exist, but you may know and like Google, so would be willing to give this Chrome thing a try.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[GodfatherofSoul]

Could be another battle in Google's big middle finger crusade pointed at Microsoft.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they just wrote the page such that standards-compliant browsers won't show the advert.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they are!

Firefox has the "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected attack site" option checked by default. (Tools --> Options --> Security) This option sends every site one visits to Google for verification, so Google is already getting a complete history of each site visited for FF users. [IE sends this information to Microsoft.]

Thus, Google has more incentive to switch an IE user to Chrome than a FF user.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Cathbard]

Actually google did issue a press release saying that they did not want to encroach upon firefox's market and that it was IE that they had their sights set on. It WAS a press release so read into that what you will. Firefox and Google do make a lot of money for each other so it may be more of a financial thing than a "do no evil" thing. I don't want to speculate, could be a bit from column A and a bit from column B.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[shentino]

That would be good marketing though...

As only the people with crappy browsers like IE would have their experiences improved by switching, while those with browsers that follow the rules probably already have satisfied users who would be meh about leaping from one cloud to another.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[zuperduperman]

It's interesting that they are attacking IE8 and not just IE6 & 7. They had good technical arguments for attacking IE6. IE7 somewhat, but almost none for IE8. This brings them 1 step closer to getting into monopolist problems with Chrome - they can hardly go to town claiming Microsoft is pushing IE unfairly on Windows when they themselves are cross-fertilizing their own browser from their search business.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry but that's incorrect. Firefox uses a local database of suspicious URLs that is updated every 30 min. URLs are never send to Google, Google sends suspicious URLs to Firefox.

The functionality you describe was optional in older versions of Firefox (to eliminate the max 30 min. delay for ultra paranoid people) but was removed on request of Google because it caused them too much load.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Bert64]

IE is a browser controlled by a company that competes with google's profitable business areas, and is used by that competitor to drive traffic to it's services which compete with google...
Firefox is not a competitor, google make no money from chrome, they just want users to be running a browser that defaults to google, which firefox also does. I imagine they also want users to be running standards compliant browsers, as it makes life much easier for them to write apps for them.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Dan541]

It's because IE users don't know any better. Firefox users are not going to switch to something else, at least not easily.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Bert64]

IE8 may be a significant improvement from 7, but it is still massively behind other browsers... It has no SVG support, it's javascript engine is still massively behind the other browsers (javascript is very important for google) and it's css support while a big improvement is still behind other browsers...
Also, doesn't IE8 require you to insert a non standard tag into your site in order to make it attempt to follow standards?

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[trazan]

Probably. And you're likely to be more open to the idea of installing a new browser if you're using IE8 (since you just did so) compared to IE6 & 7.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[dm89]

Google promoting Chrome over IE because of standards compliance makes no sense, since Google's home page is not standards compliant

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[gollito]

Not true. I did. Firefox has gotten bloated and takes forever to even startup (I only have 1-2 plugins installed). Chrome is wicked fast.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Why dont you quit this dirty cloud talk, shentino.

They are not happy mickey mouse clouds, they are shit clouds, shit clouds coming together before a shit blizzard.

You know what a shit blizzard is, dont you?

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Dan541]

To be honest I have noticed a slowdown when launching firefox, I only reboot once a month so I wasn't sure if I was just imagining it.

Re:Google Main Page Says To Use Chrome Only In IE

[Froqen]

> Is google singling out IE users?

Firefox defaults to google's search, IE doesn't (at least until the OEM gets paid).

Not so good. Time to make gooder.

[JavaManJim]

I like Chrome's Home Page web thumbprints.

I dislike that I cannot control these. For example right now, I have two timesonline.uk up. Permanently it seems. The "tool" icon does not allow Home Page editing. It should.

So,
A. If anyone out there can enlighten me on how to adjust Home Page icons. Go ahead.
B. If not Chrome developers, are you listening? Add web page adjustments to the Home Page. Pretty please?

Thanks

Re:Not so good. Time to make gooder.

[Anonymous Coward]

The current dev branch of chrome just added support for adjusting thumbnails of new pages.

Re:Not so good. Time to make gooder.

[JavaManJim]

Thanks, I hope it grows out of dev branch soon.

Re:Not so good. Time to make gooder.

[Anonymous Coward]

The home page simply shows your 9 most visited URLs. Stop visiting those pages, and visit others instead, and soon enough they will be replaced. If you deliberately visit one page a bunch of times in a row, it will eventually show up on the home page.

Re:Not so good. Time to make gooder.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like Chrome's Home Page web thumbprints.

I dislike that I cannot control these. For example right now, I have two timesonline.uk up. Permanently it seems. The "tool" icon does not allow Home Page editing. It should.

So,
A. If anyone out there can enlighten me on how to adjust Home Page icons. Go ahead.
B. If not Chrome developers, are you listening? Add web page adjustments to the Home Page. Pretty please?

Thanks

The newest release on the dev thread currently supports this.

I use winxp on my eeepc for chrome

[parann0yed]

I've found that firefox just doesn't live up to what chrome gives me. It's a simpler interface, doesn't crash (very often) and is fast. I also love the most visited pages feature ready for you when a new tab is opened. I'm a heavy duty linux user but I won't switch to linux on my little laptop until there is a stable chrome implementation for it. And generally, I hate windows.

Re:I use winxp on my eeepc for chrome

[A12m0v]

Hopefully this Summer we'll see a stable release of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and GNU/Linux

Re:I use winxp on my eeepc for chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to use closed source just for a browser feature, you might as well use Opera on Linux since it's the lesser of two evils.

Sandboxing lie...

[Computershack]

Sandboxing is NOT unique to Chrome. IE7 has been sandboxed in Vista since launch.

Re:Sandboxing lie...

[downix]

Have you read the article, where he discusses IE7, IE8, Firefox and Safari's own sandboxing techniques for comparison to Chromes?

So they are trying to use their search monopoly ..

[Anonymous Coward]

... to enter the browser market?
I'd like to call some of those EU guys...

bad OS/2 Warp interface

[rs232]

"That describes in a nutshell why OS/2 never caught on big"

Yea, OS/2 Warp never came near to matching Windows 95 in GUI functionality.

portable chrome

[viralMeme]

Is this version of portable chrome legimite. I do know it tries to go online and write to my system, strange for a portable app ...

Re:portable chrome

[Anonymous Coward]

What's strange about a web browser trying to go online?

Re:portable chrome

[viralMeme]

"What's strange about a web browser trying to go online?"

At the install stages it tries to go online and install 'stuff', which is strange for a portable app ..

Re:portable chrome

[gollito]

3. Run "IronPortable.exe". It will download the latest version of Iron from SRWare and install Flash from your computer!

Ummm.... pretty sure it's just updating itself.

Unique?

[heffrey]

What's unique about the sandboxing in Chrome. Doesn't IE8 do the same?

Is Google Chrome really good?

[Paulcheng]

When I use Chrome, I cannot open some websites. Possibly, I should change settings, but I still think it need to improve a lot.

Computershack is a skimming hack

[Anonymous Coward]

This dimwit Computershack knows very little about wtf he is talking about. See here -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1198841&cid=27622135 for an example of this on top of his utterly missing that the article discussed that IE has sandboxing in it (due to his skimming & stupidity).