Admittedly they are more open on the Mac, they are more subtle there. If you own an iPod and a Mac can you use any other media player to sync them? If another one does sync fine, how long before Apple release an update which "mysteriously" cause the competition to fail? The result is that it's easier just to go with the flow and use Apple's own stuff.
The lack of choice is more to do with the fact that if you don't like iTunes, do you need to use have it installed and use it to sync your iPod?
When I wrote that comment I was kinda rushed, it did sound a bit strong on some parts because I didn't explain it right; my bad.
The market share is (as plenty others have already mentioned) is a myth. Both Apple and *nix have enough units connected to the internet to be a valuable target. Of course the easy pickings are Windows PC's due to multiple reasons (also mentioned many times by others).
Apple & *nix tout their invulnerability to malware but Apple has one flaw here that Unix / Linux does not....a standard suite of apps the malware writer KNOWS is installed, and knowing Apple's Stalinist view to giving the consumer choice, they KNOW Apple have all but blocked any competing app from their platform.
Writing malware apps for Linux / Unix is much harder due to the variety of apps installed on any given system. Do you write for KDE? That leaves about 60% of Linux / Unix PC's unaffected. Do you write for Thunderbird? Not everyone uses (or has installed) Thunderbird. Linux / Unix come in all flavors with widely different choices of applications both installed by default, and in the repos. An attack which exploits a flaw in Thunderbird on Ubuntu may not affect Thunderbird on Fedora because of the way that either distro modifies a library.
Windows has long had the same problem in that the same suite of apps like Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express are installed on EVERY Windows PC with no way to remove them, even if the user uses a different application for the purpose.
If a malware writer exploits iTunes they know it will affect EVERY Mac. They also know Apple have an image to protect and will know through watching Apple's corporate actions that they have no problem sticking their heads in the sand pretending nothing is wrong until they get a fix for the problem.....which gives the malware writers a window to exploit Apple users, to make it worthwhile writing the malware in the first place.
By comparison any exploit found to Linux / Unix will be out in the open and developers will be discussing then fixing it in no time, so the window is much, much shorter.....in addition to being a lot less certain how many users could be infected.
Just because your PC (with any OS) is vulnerable to an exploit until it's patched, does not mean you're going to be exploited. You may never visit a site which has the drive by malware ready to hit you in that time window, or receive that spam email with the JavaScript instruction hidden inside.
It does also help that for the most part people who use non-Windows OS's tend to have made the conscious choice to avoid Windows, which means they are a little more tech savy, many of whom will have other protective measures in place, like plain text emails and some level of control over scripted actions from websites.....oh yeah, and not running by default as an administrator helps a LOT.
Ad funded TV has always been about sticking eyeballs to the screen to watch the adverts the companies pay for. The mechanism that draws (and holds) the eyeballs to the screen is the programming.
When the programming is half-decent and the adverts less in-your-face it's an acceptable balance for most; when that tips the other way round it puts people off watching at all, or pushes them to use blocking technology. Most already zone out adverts, so advertisers have to use increasingly more invasive techniques to get noticed.
Google would then reply that the more data they harvest, the more likely this can be avoided. This then leads to complaints that privacy is over-rated when it comes to making money.
I am by no means 100% satisfied with Plusnet but they do let me avoid BT (directly) and suit my budget, which is good enough for now. Knowing BT own them will make me have another look, as I'm on a monthly contract so it's no biggie to switch again. I did ask Plusnet when I was joining them about Phorm and was told they weren't signed up.
If I found an option to just have broadband and rely on VoIP for calls to save on line rental and call charges I'd go for that. The calls part changes all the time and will gradually be mostly VoIP but paying for the line rental to get the signal to you will always be needed.
I didn't know Plusnet were owned by BT but it appears you are correct. According to their site they were bought by BT and now run as an independent subsidiary. I may have to rethink if I want to stay with them. They do state that they don't have any dealings like Phorm so I'm guessing they must use their own networks, which is the important thing.
I heard Tiscali & Virgin being mentioned in the same breath so many times in relation to awful service that I assumed they were both cable, my bad.
Even if you opt out, all your traffic is going through the Phorm servers, the opt out is only them promising not to watch or interfere with it as it flows through.....so the question is, do you trust a former spyware company to watch valuable data flow past and not touch it?
BT (and the other scumbags who sold their customers out) could lessen the damage by only piping the opted in chumps through the Phorm servers.....oh yeah, and making it an opt in service.
I use Plusnet personally for the phone / call / broadband package. I paid my final bill to BT about 2 weeks ago.
I managed to save a few bucks switching but I also escaped BT and their charging for every little thing. BT have a great scam going where they believe you can't do anything to stop them.....like charging £20 reconnection charge without telling you you were disconnected, or charging a £1.50 per month extra if you don't give them access your your bank account (direct debit), or £5 if your payment don't arrive on time.....not to mention the automated call BEFORE your bill is due asking you to pay it over the phone.
TalkTalk, Virgin and BT were the big 3 who signed up to Phorm. Some companies like Tiscali are cable, but many can provide broadband through the normal phone line, you can also take your old BT number with you. No new equipment, no new installations just a change of connection details in your router.
When you do switch, check the prices of types of calls and whats included, it's not the same as BT.
Anyone who has access to the official forum, in this case BT, has access to the internet. If they see an controversial issue like Phorm being discussed elsewhere they expect to see it on the site of the company it affects (I hate to parody Microsoft's Linux propaganda here but.....) "get the facts". When it's all squeaky clean it's obvious it's a banned subject, which in turn should tell you they're doing something they shouldn't be and rather than stop doing it, they want to silence any criticism of their actions.
If a product or service was so awesome that it didn't have any bad reviews, that'd apply across the internet, not just the official site where they have a financial reason to make things look good for themselves.
The smart person would see the lack of criticism as a pretty obvious sign that the site is being stage managed to hide the negative. Any time I compare products / services I look for the good and the bad reviews; the lack of any bad reviews means I stay away from it for just this reason.
The lack of a thing can tell just as much as the presence of a thing.
For years I assumed I needed to pay BT for the line rental so I could get broadband through the telephone line, as I assumed only they could provide it. I got my calls and broadband from companies who give a shit about their customers.
Then I found out that there are several companies who can do line rental / call / broadband deals (all of those I checked out were cheaper than BT, and not all signed up for Phorm). When I found this out I was completely away from BT within one month.
If you're in the UK, and value privacy and a company who actually wants to please you, I suggest you do some Googling and be prepared to switch. They escaped criminal punishment, government punishment, the only reason they keep doing it is that they assume most people believe they are stuck with BT. If you do switch, make sure you tell them why; who knows, if they see enough rats abandoning ship it may make them rethink the Phorm deal.
ispreview.com & adslguide.org should give you a starting point.
Which would leave Windows with a big question mark over it. Would Microsoft be counter sued as the source of a lot of these reboots since it demands to be done after every update? It takes the "reboot later" option away from the user, who now knows they're gonna lose wages if they reboot during working hours. This would need a PC which can stay on for a full shift with no degradation in performance......and that ain't Windows.
....all your classmates used to bully you and genuinely are trying to contact you after all these years.
Or if someone remembered you owed them money and finally found a way to track your ass down.
I read a few blogs and articles about Windows 7, and seem to remember a lot of people thinking Windows 7 was not much more that Vista with a new skin, sold as a totally new product. They spent a fortune developing Vista, went way over cycle time and even their usual tactics of shoving it down people's throats is not working as expected, they don't want to throw away all that investment when they can put marketing on the job and sell it with a new skin.
As it gets closer to release it may turn out to be more than a Vista skin, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to pull that one on the unsuspecting saps who are still gullible enough to believe them.
They'd fix Windows so it didn't need a reboot after every freakin' update. Even if you have a fast boot time (which Windows does not even come close to either) it still leaves workers twiddling their thumbs while it does it's thang. It makes it even more insulting when you keep getting the annoying reminders which eventually have the "reboot later" option greyed out, giving you no choice but to stop what you're doing for a few minutes. Even then, what happens if that latest "critical update to IE" breaks a driver and your system won't boot?
By it's nature, Open Source gives you both the code and the right to modify it to suit your needs, so why not recompile it to pass every file it checks, therefor nullifying the DRM aspect of it?
The name Digital Rights Management gives away who it's made for....it gives the content producers the right to restrict what their customers can do with the stuff they bought, but calling it a more accurate "hire" instead of a "sale" would make more sheep wonder why.
Why stick to an OS which is fully virus compatible? I know Microsoft try their hardest to be incompatible with everyone else to lock people into their systems but they do have the market sewn up on malware compatibility.
The whole anti-malware market exists to fit one purpose.....to plug the holes Microsoft's incompetence leaves behind.
The moral of the story is that if you insist on (or have to because of some proprietary software you need) using Windows you're never gonna be secure, no matter how many anti-malware programs you use because the underlying OS is a piece of shit.
Switching away from Windows to UNIX / Linux / OSX will give you a huge head start on security before you even start thinking of what else you can do to stay secure.
It's like choosing the back row as your starting point in a race, knowing you don't have a snowballs chance in hell of catching the pack, let alone overtaking them.
I'll take your word for it, I never tried the addon as I was used to the AwesomeBar by the time it arrived. I assumed it reverted to the old bar, given the name of the addon. In this case I agree that it should be an option for those who want it, and needs addressed.
I actually like it now, although I did hate it for a while until I acclimatised. I do agree that it should be switch-off-able in the preferences or via an addon for those who don't like it. Open Source is supposed to be about choice and making the software behave the way you want it to right? That's in part why proprietary software tends to fail; a corporate image with limits on how much you can customize your use of it.
For a while there was no add on to do it, and you had to choose whether it was a deal breaker to upgrade or not. It's been around for a while now though so as far as I'm concerned now the AwesomeBar is a non-issue.
It also means that Wallmart, Apple and Amazon are all pushing for non DRM music.
Apple will never do a DRM free iTunes, they need DRM to lock people into being forced to keep buying Apple products in the future, or throw away all that money you spent on iTunes. Even if everyone else dropped DRM overnight, Apple would fight tooth and nail to keep it. Right now they can tune the reality distortion filter so that the people blame the nasty record companies for forcing DRM.
This country has a serious mental problem in government. "of the people, by the people, and for the people" is not just a slogan, it is supposed to be the core value of the law.
Those who made that famous ideology intentionally let people believe "the people" meant the average Joe. It served their ego's and reputations well. There has always been a government of the people, by the people by for the people......the difference is that their "people" are like them.....the elite.
The sooner people wake up to the fact that an election and possible change of government only gives the average Joe the illusion that they have some say in things the better. The elite don't take risks, they make sure both sides are attached by puppet strings so it's business as usual regardless of who the common rabble choose to sit at the top seat.
Most Linux users use Firefox, as it's a non GTK+ / QT native. Most of these Firefox users are power users who will tweak their Firefox to what they want. Most of them will have AdBlock Plus and NoScripts at the very least.
In other words, Linux users tend to be wise to Google's model and block out their grubby fingers. Why would Google put any time and effort into releasing a Linux native client when most wouldn't use it without it being modified to give these same functions anyway?
Like everything else Google do, it's all about data mining; if it's going to be blocked by most, why bother?
The share Chrome has achieved in such a short time is remarkable but it's largely the curiosity factor. People are downloading and trying it, the real question is how many chumps will be convinced that all Google's data mining and ad serving is a worthwhile trade off and switch to Chrome as their main browser. Personally it won't get within a million miles of my PC as a Google product, I'll wait for an open source fork with all the crap cut out before I try it; even then I'm perfectly happy with Firefox and it's extensions that it'll likely be just the curiosity factor.
People who know of the data mining and have gotten used to mostly advert free surfing won't touch Chrome as a main browser, even if they are playing with it right now.
I'm wondering now if this is Google's equivalent of an official OS. Many assumed they'd do their own Linux distro but that's possibly more wishful thinking than anything else. All of their services are web based, so making a single piece of software people can run on their own (Windows) platform with all their services tied in and designed for it is sorta like a virtual OS, in the form of a browser. If they can get people convinced that the only piece of software they need to use is Chrome they win.
Dunno what to make of Google when it comes to Linux. Their server farms are all Linux, without Linux they'd never be where they are now. They do summer of code projects to help Linux and FOSS software projects, yet at times where it could really help add authenticity in the minds of Joe Shmoe they don't do a proper Linux client for their software and rely on a half ass'd Wine ported Windows version.
Until a few years ago Microsoft had the world in terms of it's install base. They had people believing that their PC was Windows and that the internet is IE. In typical MS fashion their contempt in not giving customers what they want has opened the doors for competition; who in many cases offer a better designed product more suited to the users needs. Until a few years ago any competitor to MS would only ever have a tiny impact; until Firefox.
With Firefox getting mainstream attention it opens people's minds that you don't need to put up with IE to surf the web. That opens users up to how easy it is to install and use a different browser, while Firefox has gained the most disgruntled IE users, Opera has also picked up some.
With Vista being so bad, and Linux maturing as much as it has the same exodus is happening in the OS mindset. People are starting to see that Windows is not their PC. There are other ways a PC can run, with either Linux or Apple. Ubuntu hitting more mainstream press and being sold by some large companies like Dell (albeit half heartedly for now) as well as the ultra mobile market. All these factors are breaking the mindset that MS have had for years.
In the office suite space, OpenOffice has been getting more acceptance for normal users while Google Docs has opened people to the idea of using a browser for that task.
While MS still have a huge market share and are very entrenched their dominance is slipping week by week. Google have seen the browser market open up with Firefox, people are becoming aware of change and opting for it. They are looking for a browser which suits them. Firefox is already entrenched in many users minds, those users will take a lot of convincing to change again. I believe Google have spotted this and want to get in with their own browser while there are plenty of willing converts. Bill Gates worked out many years ago that people don't like change when they get used to something. If Google leave it too late and help Firefox win the browser war they will lose out.
I do like the design of Chrome, it feels like a Google application in that it's deceptively simple looking. I can see it appealing to those who see technology as confusing, or should that be "those who are unaware that every click will be data mined for profit".
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Admittedly they are more open on the Mac, they are more subtle there. If you own an iPod and a Mac can you use any other media player to sync them? If another one does sync fine, how long before Apple release an update which "mysteriously" cause the competition to fail? The result is that it's easier just to go with the flow and use Apple's own stuff.
The lack of choice is more to do with the fact that if you don't like iTunes, do you need to use have it installed and use it to sync your iPod?
When I wrote that comment I was kinda rushed, it did sound a bit strong on some parts because I didn't explain it right; my bad.
The market share is (as plenty others have already mentioned) is a myth. Both Apple and *nix have enough units connected to the internet to be a valuable target. Of course the easy pickings are Windows PC's due to multiple reasons (also mentioned many times by others).
Apple & *nix tout their invulnerability to malware but Apple has one flaw here that Unix / Linux does not....a standard suite of apps the malware writer KNOWS is installed, and knowing Apple's Stalinist view to giving the consumer choice, they KNOW Apple have all but blocked any competing app from their platform.
Writing malware apps for Linux / Unix is much harder due to the variety of apps installed on any given system. Do you write for KDE? That leaves about 60% of Linux / Unix PC's unaffected. Do you write for Thunderbird? Not everyone uses (or has installed) Thunderbird. Linux / Unix come in all flavors with widely different choices of applications both installed by default, and in the repos. An attack which exploits a flaw in Thunderbird on Ubuntu may not affect Thunderbird on Fedora because of the way that either distro modifies a library.
Windows has long had the same problem in that the same suite of apps like Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express are installed on EVERY Windows PC with no way to remove them, even if the user uses a different application for the purpose.
If a malware writer exploits iTunes they know it will affect EVERY Mac. They also know Apple have an image to protect and will know through watching Apple's corporate actions that they have no problem sticking their heads in the sand pretending nothing is wrong until they get a fix for the problem.....which gives the malware writers a window to exploit Apple users, to make it worthwhile writing the malware in the first place.
By comparison any exploit found to Linux / Unix will be out in the open and developers will be discussing then fixing it in no time, so the window is much, much shorter.....in addition to being a lot less certain how many users could be infected.
Just because your PC (with any OS) is vulnerable to an exploit until it's patched, does not mean you're going to be exploited. You may never visit a site which has the drive by malware ready to hit you in that time window, or receive that spam email with the JavaScript instruction hidden inside.
It does also help that for the most part people who use non-Windows OS's tend to have made the conscious choice to avoid Windows, which means they are a little more tech savy, many of whom will have other protective measures in place, like plain text emails and some level of control over scripted actions from websites.....oh yeah, and not running by default as an administrator helps a LOT.
Ad funded TV has always been about sticking eyeballs to the screen to watch the adverts the companies pay for. The mechanism that draws (and holds) the eyeballs to the screen is the programming. When the programming is half-decent and the adverts less in-your-face it's an acceptable balance for most; when that tips the other way round it puts people off watching at all, or pushes them to use blocking technology. Most already zone out adverts, so advertisers have to use increasingly more invasive techniques to get noticed.
Google would then reply that the more data they harvest, the more likely this can be avoided. This then leads to complaints that privacy is over-rated when it comes to making money.
I am by no means 100% satisfied with Plusnet but they do let me avoid BT (directly) and suit my budget, which is good enough for now. Knowing BT own them will make me have another look, as I'm on a monthly contract so it's no biggie to switch again. I did ask Plusnet when I was joining them about Phorm and was told they weren't signed up.
If I found an option to just have broadband and rely on VoIP for calls to save on line rental and call charges I'd go for that. The calls part changes all the time and will gradually be mostly VoIP but paying for the line rental to get the signal to you will always be needed.
I didn't know Plusnet were owned by BT but it appears you are correct. According to their site they were bought by BT and now run as an independent subsidiary. I may have to rethink if I want to stay with them. They do state that they don't have any dealings like Phorm so I'm guessing they must use their own networks, which is the important thing. I heard Tiscali & Virgin being mentioned in the same breath so many times in relation to awful service that I assumed they were both cable, my bad.
Even if you opt out, all your traffic is going through the Phorm servers, the opt out is only them promising not to watch or interfere with it as it flows through.....so the question is, do you trust a former spyware company to watch valuable data flow past and not touch it? BT (and the other scumbags who sold their customers out) could lessen the damage by only piping the opted in chumps through the Phorm servers.....oh yeah, and making it an opt in service.
I use Plusnet personally for the phone / call / broadband package. I paid my final bill to BT about 2 weeks ago. I managed to save a few bucks switching but I also escaped BT and their charging for every little thing. BT have a great scam going where they believe you can't do anything to stop them.....like charging £20 reconnection charge without telling you you were disconnected, or charging a £1.50 per month extra if you don't give them access your your bank account (direct debit), or £5 if your payment don't arrive on time.....not to mention the automated call BEFORE your bill is due asking you to pay it over the phone. TalkTalk, Virgin and BT were the big 3 who signed up to Phorm. Some companies like Tiscali are cable, but many can provide broadband through the normal phone line, you can also take your old BT number with you. No new equipment, no new installations just a change of connection details in your router. When you do switch, check the prices of types of calls and whats included, it's not the same as BT.
Anyone who has access to the official forum, in this case BT, has access to the internet. If they see an controversial issue like Phorm being discussed elsewhere they expect to see it on the site of the company it affects (I hate to parody Microsoft's Linux propaganda here but.....) "get the facts". When it's all squeaky clean it's obvious it's a banned subject, which in turn should tell you they're doing something they shouldn't be and rather than stop doing it, they want to silence any criticism of their actions. If a product or service was so awesome that it didn't have any bad reviews, that'd apply across the internet, not just the official site where they have a financial reason to make things look good for themselves.
The smart person would see the lack of criticism as a pretty obvious sign that the site is being stage managed to hide the negative. Any time I compare products / services I look for the good and the bad reviews; the lack of any bad reviews means I stay away from it for just this reason. The lack of a thing can tell just as much as the presence of a thing.
For years I assumed I needed to pay BT for the line rental so I could get broadband through the telephone line, as I assumed only they could provide it. I got my calls and broadband from companies who give a shit about their customers. Then I found out that there are several companies who can do line rental / call / broadband deals (all of those I checked out were cheaper than BT, and not all signed up for Phorm). When I found this out I was completely away from BT within one month. If you're in the UK, and value privacy and a company who actually wants to please you, I suggest you do some Googling and be prepared to switch. They escaped criminal punishment, government punishment, the only reason they keep doing it is that they assume most people believe they are stuck with BT. If you do switch, make sure you tell them why; who knows, if they see enough rats abandoning ship it may make them rethink the Phorm deal. ispreview.com & adslguide.org should give you a starting point.
Which would leave Windows with a big question mark over it. Would Microsoft be counter sued as the source of a lot of these reboots since it demands to be done after every update? It takes the "reboot later" option away from the user, who now knows they're gonna lose wages if they reboot during working hours. This would need a PC which can stay on for a full shift with no degradation in performance......and that ain't Windows.
....all your classmates used to bully you and genuinely are trying to contact you after all these years. Or if someone remembered you owed them money and finally found a way to track your ass down.
I read a few blogs and articles about Windows 7, and seem to remember a lot of people thinking Windows 7 was not much more that Vista with a new skin, sold as a totally new product. They spent a fortune developing Vista, went way over cycle time and even their usual tactics of shoving it down people's throats is not working as expected, they don't want to throw away all that investment when they can put marketing on the job and sell it with a new skin. As it gets closer to release it may turn out to be more than a Vista skin, but I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to pull that one on the unsuspecting saps who are still gullible enough to believe them.
They'd fix Windows so it didn't need a reboot after every freakin' update. Even if you have a fast boot time (which Windows does not even come close to either) it still leaves workers twiddling their thumbs while it does it's thang. It makes it even more insulting when you keep getting the annoying reminders which eventually have the "reboot later" option greyed out, giving you no choice but to stop what you're doing for a few minutes. Even then, what happens if that latest "critical update to IE" breaks a driver and your system won't boot?
By it's nature, Open Source gives you both the code and the right to modify it to suit your needs, so why not recompile it to pass every file it checks, therefor nullifying the DRM aspect of it? The name Digital Rights Management gives away who it's made for....it gives the content producers the right to restrict what their customers can do with the stuff they bought, but calling it a more accurate "hire" instead of a "sale" would make more sheep wonder why.
Why stick to an OS which is fully virus compatible? I know Microsoft try their hardest to be incompatible with everyone else to lock people into their systems but they do have the market sewn up on malware compatibility.
The whole anti-malware market exists to fit one purpose.....to plug the holes Microsoft's incompetence leaves behind.
The moral of the story is that if you insist on (or have to because of some proprietary software you need) using Windows you're never gonna be secure, no matter how many anti-malware programs you use because the underlying OS is a piece of shit.
Switching away from Windows to UNIX / Linux / OSX will give you a huge head start on security before you even start thinking of what else you can do to stay secure.
It's like choosing the back row as your starting point in a race, knowing you don't have a snowballs chance in hell of catching the pack, let alone overtaking them.
I'll take your word for it, I never tried the addon as I was used to the AwesomeBar by the time it arrived. I assumed it reverted to the old bar, given the name of the addon. In this case I agree that it should be an option for those who want it, and needs addressed.
I actually like it now, although I did hate it for a while until I acclimatised. I do agree that it should be switch-off-able in the preferences or via an addon for those who don't like it. Open Source is supposed to be about choice and making the software behave the way you want it to right? That's in part why proprietary software tends to fail; a corporate image with limits on how much you can customize your use of it.
For a while there was no add on to do it, and you had to choose whether it was a deal breaker to upgrade or not. It's been around for a while now though so as far as I'm concerned now the AwesomeBar is a non-issue.
It also means that Wallmart, Apple and Amazon are all pushing for non DRM music.
Apple will never do a DRM free iTunes, they need DRM to lock people into being forced to keep buying Apple products in the future, or throw away all that money you spent on iTunes. Even if everyone else dropped DRM overnight, Apple would fight tooth and nail to keep it. Right now they can tune the reality distortion filter so that the people blame the nasty record companies for forcing DRM.
This country has a serious mental problem in government. "of the people, by the people, and for the people" is not just a slogan, it is supposed to be the core value of the law.
Those who made that famous ideology intentionally let people believe "the people" meant the average Joe. It served their ego's and reputations well. There has always been a government of the people, by the people by for the people......the difference is that their "people" are like them.....the elite.
The sooner people wake up to the fact that an election and possible change of government only gives the average Joe the illusion that they have some say in things the better. The elite don't take risks, they make sure both sides are attached by puppet strings so it's business as usual regardless of who the common rabble choose to sit at the top seat.
Most Linux users use Firefox, as it's a non GTK+ / QT native. Most of these Firefox users are power users who will tweak their Firefox to what they want. Most of them will have AdBlock Plus and NoScripts at the very least.
In other words, Linux users tend to be wise to Google's model and block out their grubby fingers. Why would Google put any time and effort into releasing a Linux native client when most wouldn't use it without it being modified to give these same functions anyway?
Like everything else Google do, it's all about data mining; if it's going to be blocked by most, why bother?
The share Chrome has achieved in such a short time is remarkable but it's largely the curiosity factor. People are downloading and trying it, the real question is how many chumps will be convinced that all Google's data mining and ad serving is a worthwhile trade off and switch to Chrome as their main browser. Personally it won't get within a million miles of my PC as a Google product, I'll wait for an open source fork with all the crap cut out before I try it; even then I'm perfectly happy with Firefox and it's extensions that it'll likely be just the curiosity factor.
People who know of the data mining and have gotten used to mostly advert free surfing won't touch Chrome as a main browser, even if they are playing with it right now.
I'm wondering now if this is Google's equivalent of an official OS. Many assumed they'd do their own Linux distro but that's possibly more wishful thinking than anything else. All of their services are web based, so making a single piece of software people can run on their own (Windows) platform with all their services tied in and designed for it is sorta like a virtual OS, in the form of a browser. If they can get people convinced that the only piece of software they need to use is Chrome they win.
Dunno what to make of Google when it comes to Linux. Their server farms are all Linux, without Linux they'd never be where they are now. They do summer of code projects to help Linux and FOSS software projects, yet at times where it could really help add authenticity in the minds of Joe Shmoe they don't do a proper Linux client for their software and rely on a half ass'd Wine ported Windows version.
Until a few years ago Microsoft had the world in terms of it's install base. They had people believing that their PC was Windows and that the internet is IE. In typical MS fashion their contempt in not giving customers what they want has opened the doors for competition; who in many cases offer a better designed product more suited to the users needs. Until a few years ago any competitor to MS would only ever have a tiny impact; until Firefox.
With Firefox getting mainstream attention it opens people's minds that you don't need to put up with IE to surf the web. That opens users up to how easy it is to install and use a different browser, while Firefox has gained the most disgruntled IE users, Opera has also picked up some.
With Vista being so bad, and Linux maturing as much as it has the same exodus is happening in the OS mindset. People are starting to see that Windows is not their PC. There are other ways a PC can run, with either Linux or Apple. Ubuntu hitting more mainstream press and being sold by some large companies like Dell (albeit half heartedly for now) as well as the ultra mobile market. All these factors are breaking the mindset that MS have had for years.
In the office suite space, OpenOffice has been getting more acceptance for normal users while Google Docs has opened people to the idea of using a browser for that task.
While MS still have a huge market share and are very entrenched their dominance is slipping week by week. Google have seen the browser market open up with Firefox, people are becoming aware of change and opting for it. They are looking for a browser which suits them. Firefox is already entrenched in many users minds, those users will take a lot of convincing to change again. I believe Google have spotted this and want to get in with their own browser while there are plenty of willing converts. Bill Gates worked out many years ago that people don't like change when they get used to something. If Google leave it too late and help Firefox win the browser war they will lose out.
I do like the design of Chrome, it feels like a Google application in that it's deceptively simple looking. I can see it appealing to those who see technology as confusing, or should that be "those who are unaware that every click will be data mined for profit".