Google Releases Chrome 5.0 For Win/Mac/Linux

ddfall writes "Four months after the release of version 4.0 for Windows, Google has announced the availability of Chrome 5.0 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux — the first stable release to be available on all three major platforms. Chrome 5.0.375.55 is available to download from google.com/chrome. Users who currently have Chrome installed can use the built-in update function."

Comments

this is going to be

[nimbius]

a hard sell for me. The entire point of linux and me switching to it was the privacy and security. What is my incentive to switch from a floss browser on a floss OS to a nonfree browser (or not as free as id like to see it) which saps my bandwidth on the backend to report my surfing habits back to google.

and no, i cant trust that it isnt communicating with google or wont decide to at some point in the future. The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.

Re:this is going to be

[MrEricSir]

Why not go with Chromium?

Re:this is going to be

[MrEricSir]

Facebook went from being a closed network to an open one with several changes to the privacy controls, that awful Beacon feature, etc. They never back down until there's immense pressure. Usually even then they don't back down entirely. And it's all so they can monetize their site.

Google made a mistake with their wifi collection software and quickly admitted to it when asked about it, then came up with a plan to destroy the data.

How are these two things even remotely similar?

Re:this is going to be

[LordLimecat]

which saps my bandwidth on the backend to report my surfing habits back to google.

The whole german wifi debacle is making this company just as hot to handle as facebook.

Several points...
1) If you want to eliminate the "phone home", you can do so very easily under options-->under the hood. Uncheck the top 5 boxes; now your data is secure. This is what I did on a live-boot cd where CPU and bandwidth are at a premium.

2) If you do not feel you can trust that it isnt communicating, you can actually VERIFY that, either through about:net-internals, or wireshark, or netstat, or router logs. Not to mention most of the source is actually AVAILABLE....

3) Google as a whole tends to be in line with foss philosophy. They make it clear what they are after-- your data-- but otherwise they use open protocols, with open access, unlike just about anyone else. Ever try and move your data off of AOL, or Yahoo? Ever try to access hotmail over imap? Ever try and do a contacts export from AOL?

4) If it is really that big of a deal, use Chromium; you really cant complain that that requires blind trust (as it is open source). Of course, note that with any browser, when you use google, you have 90% of the same privacy issues-- most of the Chrome issues stem from auto-suggest.

5) The "wifi debacle" amounted to Google coming out with no prompting or coercion and saying, "We may have goofed and gathered some data, bear with us while we investigate." Thats a lot different than having a leak or getting caught doing something, and I think it is unfair to try to equate them with Facebook. If you're a techie, and have used google products, you KNOW what theyre after anyways, and they generally give you tools to opt out anyways.

Re:this is going to be

[LordLimecat]

But at least google takes pains to ensure you can leave them at ANY time by using open protocols and standards. Can you say the same for any of those other companies?

Re:yay?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Parent is not a troll. It's a valid complaint. Displaying the entire URL, including the protocol, is absolutely the standard and should remain that way.

Re:yay?

[MichaelJ]

So if I copy all but the first character, I get exactly what I copied, but if I copy the first character it prepends the protocol to the front on the clipboard? That's incredibly inconsistent. I should have control over whether or not I get the protocol when I copy, and that control should be the extent of my selection.

Re:yay?

[istartedi]

Heh. I didn't even realize that. The funny thing is, I have no idea how to upgrade anyway. They don't have the usual File/Edit/View menus. There's just a wrench icon, and it doesn't appear to have any updater under its menu hierarchy.

Googling around (heheh) I found out they left out the F/E/V on purpose. That might make sense for mobile, but I'm using a nice wide LCD with more screen real estate than you can shake a stick at. Without F/E/V I feel like I'm subject to somebody's vision of "clean minimalist design" where they thought they knew what was best for the user. For cryin' out loud, if I wanted to use a Mac I'd already be using one. Hey... maybe it'll automaticly upgrade to 6.0 if I throw it in the recycling bin... no, wait... AHA! The updater is in the "About Chrome" thingy.

Oh sure, bury the updater in the widget that usually just shows copyright info. That's, just... wonderful. To be fair though, interfaces to updaters aren't quite as standard as F/E/V.

Re:yay?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Because users who want to know what their browser is doing want to see it, that's why. No other justification is needed.

One of the commenters on the CNET story on the issue compared it to the Windows practice of hiding file extensions, which is a good analogy. We know how well that worked out (click here on mysterious_attachment.doc{.exe} and see what happens!) Sure, the protocol name may be gabble to most users, but at least the information's there, right out front. And occasionally it even leads them to educate themselves, asking a more technically knowledgeable friend, "What is that http thing, anyway?"

Re:yay?

[Tetsujin]

If Chrome does this, then this is a flaw. Transparent clipboard modification should never be done, by any program.

A (much) better method would be to insert the protocol string when the user clicks on the URL bar.

I can't stand all this extra logic they've stuck into URL bars (and other text fields, for that matter) in the last ten years or so... It's a text entry field, it should act like one. It shouldn't select all when I click on it, it shouldn't try to guess where I want my selection to end, snap it to word boundaries or whatever... And the simplest, most straight-forward way of making the protocol selectable for copy/paste is just to have it in the URL bar in the first place.

Re:yay?

[shish]

Because users who want to know what their browser is doing want to see it, that's why.

That's a pretty small minority -- I've actually seen more people at the other end of the scale, where they don't know what the URL display is at all. If they want to eg check their yahoo mail, they don't go to the URL box and type "mail.yahoo.com", they go to the search box, type "google", search (using google) to find google, click on the first result to get to the google home page, then type "yahoo mail" into that box, search, and click the first result there...

(This is what happens when we train people to follow patterns with no understanding of how it actually works :( )