Google Chrome Developers On Browser Security

CowboyRobot writes "Developers of Google's Chrome browser have spoken up in an article describing their approach to keeping the browser secure, focusing on minimizing the frequency, duration, and severity of exposure. One tool Chrome uses is a recently open-sourced update distribution application called 'Omaha.' 'Omaha automatically checks for software updates every five hours. When a new update is available, a fraction of clients are told about it, based on a probability set by the team. This probability lets the team verify the quality of the release before informing all clients.'"

Comments

Re:Beta testers

[jayme0227]

It's certainly better than having the entire user base beta test the patch for them which is where we're at now in most cases.

Now for a better scheduler

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if they could stop running googleupdate crap ALL THE TIME (maybe use the OSs built in scheduling system to run every so often) and give me more control over when/how things get updated it will be much better.

Re:Now for a better scheduler

[Anonymous Coward]

It _is_ killable - ironically, part of what you have to do is delete the job from the scheduler which restarts the damn thing every so often.

It could do with a more user friendly ticky box to turn it off, but it's not completely evil.

One thing I've never understood is why MS didn't expose the Windows Update facilities to other vendors (with user approval, of course.) A one-stop shop for updates a la Ubuntu's Update Manager would be a hell of a lot less messy, and it would actually work for people who do the Right Thing and don't run with Admin / Power User privileges.

Re:Beta testers

[hairyfeet]

But let us be fair here: How many fricking machines are running Windows? How many hundreds of thousands or even millions of different hardware and software configurations? Just in my home I have a 733Mhz, a 1.7Ghz laptop, my boys 2.6Ghz and 3.06Ghz, and finally the 3.6GHz I'm about to give the oldest, all running XP32, while I am running XP x64 on my new AMD dual. They all have hugely different hardware and software installed, yet somehow it just seems to work.

According to Wikipedia you are looking at a 400 million + install base for JUST XP, and then when you figure in that they are currently supporting Win2K Pro, WinXP 32/64, WinServer 2K3 32/64, and WinVista the idea that they could put out patches that wouldn't break something is just plain crazy. The fact that the "oops" patches only happen once or twice a year is frankly a miracle when you consider how many different possible combinations of software/hardware there can be on a Windows machine.

How many times have you see on the forums after the latest Ubuntu release "the update for foo completely hosed my (insert hardware here)"? I'm sure the Linux guys doing hardware driver support can tell you what a massive PITA it is trying to make sure an update doesn't totally hose something else, and still there are always problems. So considering the fact that unlike certain companies named after fruit I can put a machine together with so many different mish mashes of hardware together and actually have the thing work and run stable I think we can cut the guys at MSFT a little break when it comes to the occasional "oops" patch.