Sony To Put Chrome On Laptops

consonant writes "FT is reporting that Google has reached a deal with Sony to ship Chrome on the Vaio line of PCs. Google confirmed that Sony PCs carrying Chrome had started to go on sale and said it was in talks for similar deals with other computer makers. It said the arrangement was 'experimental' and part of wider efforts to boost distribution, including a deal to make Chrome available to internet users who download the RealPlayer software and the company's first use of television advertising. While mainstream media coverage and financial details were very sparse, El Reg terms it a 'Microsoft-snubbing deal.' Google also mentioned it was pushing for similar deals with other vendors. Could this spell the beginning of the end for IE?"

Comments

For those who don't read the article

[EponymousCustard]

It refers to the Chrome browser, not the OS

Re:Chrome Won't Make It In The Enterprise

[shutdown -p now]

In Windows, Chrome installs itself into the user's profile folder under the Local Settings folder, rather than into the traditional Program Files folder location.

This appears to be done to try to circumvent user restrictions, often imposed by network administrators to prevent users from installing unauthorized software. While this may work in some settings, any well crafted software restriction policy will prevent this attempt to bypass security restrictions.

As well, by failing to follow proscribed methods for installing software on Windows, Google is actually making it difficult for enterprises that might choose to distribute Chrome on their networks.

Per-user installation is a well-documented feature of Windows Installer, and is one of the "proscribed methods". It's not a hack or a workaround for anything.

Re:Head asplodes

[toolie]

You have to be joking. Chrome is open-source. You can go and look through the source and VERIFY that it's not sending anything about you home.

Seriously, go look. We'll await your admission of being wrong.

According to the Chrome Wikipedia article, there are several tracking methods in Chrome, one is not optional, several are optional. The scary one is the RLZ Identifier.

The RLZ Identifier is non-optional, it can send back anything it wants in an encoded string, and it sends stuff back to Google 1) every 24 hours, 2) or on every Google search query, or 3) when a 'significant event' (no definition except 'such as a successful installation') occurs. Some of the stuff Google admits to being in there is the installion date, when the first time you used certain features and where you downloaded the install files from. The RLZ parameter is stored in the system registry (yay) and can be updated at any time Google wants. Another fun fact:

The code that makes this work is not included in the open source project (http://www.chromium.org) because it only applies to the version of the browser that Google distributes, Google Chrome.

From Google itself on the RLZ Parameter.

So tell me again how it isn't tracking you?