Google To Auto-Migrate Some Users To 64-bit Chrome

Google says it will automatically upgrade the version of Chrome that some Windows users are running, in what it describes as a bet to improve stability, performance, and security. From a report on ZDNet: In a blog post on Tuesday, the search engine giant explained that Chrome users running 64-bit Windows with 4GB or more of memory will be automatically migrated to the 64-bit version of Chrome if they are running the 32-bit version.

Comments

Re:But Google will get a free pass

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's not necessarily good how is a switch from 32 to 64bit of browser worse than an entire operating system?

Re:As if it doesn't use enough memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Not loading 32 bit shared objects to support Chrome could result in less memory use.

Re:But Google will get a free pass

[dogbert_2001]

ACKCHYUALLY,
Each Chrome tab is limited to 4GB, even in 64-bit. "For security reasons."
And I've hit the limit before. Scrolling endless webpages is an easy way to hit the limit. Also, some addons like AdBlock use up a lot of memory.

This is why I don't use spyware

[smooth wombat]

How anyone can think a company manipulating software on your machine, without your permission, is acceptable is beyond me. It's bad enough Microsoft does it with their forced updates, but now Google is intruding as well?

The only reason I have Chrome on my system at work is so I can tell Adobe, "No, I still can't log into our VIP account because your site doesn't work correctly. It doesn't matter if I use IE, Firefox or Chrome, the problem is on your end."

In days past people would be railing against any company which pulled this stunt. Now they shrug and accept the illegal intrusion, making excuses for why this is good. I'm sure if your car dealer would randomly change things on your car you wouldn't have a problem with it either, right?

Security?

[DrYak]

What does 32 vs 64 bit have to do with security? I'm genuinely curious...

What is has to do is that the architecture that brought 64bits (AMD64), also brought several security features (like NX bit) among others.

32bits software might be targeting architecture that predate the NX bit (e.g.: if you still have an old 32bits .EXE that dates back from the Pentium 4 era, it might be writing to and executing from the same memory area), and perhaps Windows could theoretically not enable NX for 32bits legacy software on these grounds? (to avoid to break old 32bits software ?)
By accelerating the deprecation of 32bits software, they might try to deprecate the non-NX software ?
(That is pure speculation on my part. I have not enough experience with Windows)

(register vs. stack pressure is also different between the 2 architecture. AMD64, in addition to 64bits, also brought twice the number of registers. meaning that more things can be kept on CPU and less needs to be written to the stack. Which could mean less potential candidate in case of stack smashing exploit. But I'm really going on a limb here. Return address is way more interesting to abuse in this case than register value.
It's definitely less probable reason than NX).

I doubt that software would be affected easily by any other difference between the two
(e.g.: warp around at different values, 0x7fffffff vs. 0x7fffffffffffffff
That is highly unlikely : win64 is a LLP64 platform - all integers are still 32bits (both int and long), unless explicitely required (long long, hence the LL) and thus all value still wrap similarily between same source code software compiled for 32bits and 64bits.
only pointers are promoted to 64bits (hence the P) and thus only point math would wrap differently)