So what do you think about Chrome?

[AutisticCuckoo]

Google releases a new browser (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) called Chrome, as you may have heard. The rendering engine is based on WebKit (same as Safari).

What's your take on this? What impact will it have? Is it a desperate countermeasure to fight Microsoft's Silverlight?

The way they present the technical information in the form of a comic strip makes me wonder, but then again, we're talking about Google here. :)

[ScurvyRose]

It's sad yet funny to me that when I read the title of the thread this is the only thing that came to mind!

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[Wufnu]

I was thinking about its percentage in stainless steel :( I'll have to read up about this browser; I'd never heard of it before.

[AutisticCuckoo]

No wonder – it's brand new! :)

[tp6626]

I was thinking of posting about it later. On the news tonight they said it had been accidentally leaked by the Vice President, and then they interviewed a smirking product manager.

Is anyone else suspicious that they were all good and ready for launch, and used this tactic to get LOADS of publicity / TV air time to rub in Microsofts face?

[Ijz]

I think Google has a descent chance to get people to use it. They will definitely be competing for the Firefox crowd I think. There is also a huge population of Windows boxes out there running IE because it came with the OS. I don't think Google will be able to reach them, but maybe they got some tricks up their sleeves.

As for Silverlight, I don't think Chrome is any danger to it. Silverlight it just a plugin (like flash) which runs in the browser and will probably also run in Chrome. I haven't dived into Chrome so I don't know what unique features it offers. From a developers perspective, you really don't want to target a single browser, but rather all of them. I think comparing Chrome to Silverlight, is like comparing apples to oranges.

[tp6626]

Ok silverlight may be ok, but after seeing their 'comic', my brain started ticking.

They're saying, rejig the browser so that it works better with todays requirements. Thats videos, music, games, email, word processors, spread sheets, databases etc...

Ok fair enough, that means Chrome will be running in Windows doing all those things itself.

I pondered, "In this case, why do I need Windows at all?".

I can't think of a good reason that cannot be overcome fairly simply.

Therefore, once Chrome catches, this will happen.

1. BIOS / Motherboard manufacturers begin developing boards that boot to BIOS and connect to the web to make 'Set-up' downloads. No need for boot discs anymore.
2. Google configure Chrome to boot straight from BIOS, straight into the browser, with no need for an operating system as such.
3. PC manufacturers start churning out 'blank' PC's that the user 'creates' their own 'system' on when they switch it on.
4. Google take over the world.
5. Microsoft realise and its too late?

How plausible is that. Microsoft did it to IBM in the 80's, right under their nose!

[ThaiGreenTea]

I'm using Chrome right now, and I love it. Much faster and has a cleaner UI. I don't even notice Chrome when I browse, I just notice the webpage.

[Samvega]

I haven't tried chrome yet, but it's just one more browser that is NOT compliant to open web standards that poor web designers have to optimize their pages for. I'm sure every frustrated web designer on earth cried for hours after google made the announcement. This would not be an issue is browsers just complied with open standards. IE is the absolute worst of all of them. Incidentally, safari seems to be the most compliant of all browsers, but I don't use it because of my moral reservations again apple.

Also, I don't wish to contribute to google's world domination - it competes with my own ambitions.

[PHS Philip]

So far it's been a pain. A lot of pages are buggy (ironically including google's bug report page), it doesn't work with a lot of Facebook stuff, it misloads a lot of pages, and I can't press down on my middle mouse button to scroll in it. Plus I miss my noscript and adblock addons from firefox. I also can't find a way to make it ask me before allowing a cookie.

[Tim]

I haven't tried chrome yet, but it's just one more browser that is NOT compliant to open web standards that poor web designers have to optimize their pages for. I'm sure every frustrated web designer on earth cried for hours after google made the announcement. This would not be an issue is browsers just complied with open standards. IE is the absolute worst of all of them. Incidentally, safari seems to be the most compliant of all browsers, but I don't use it because of my moral reservations again apple.

Also, I don't wish to contribute to google's world domination - it competes with my own ambitions.

haha, yes. I am one of those poor web designers. When I first got wind of Chrome, my first impulse was to drown myself in the bathtub or leap from a tall building. And then I thought, "I sure hope they make it W3C-compliant."

Although it can't possibly be worse than IE 6, which was most certainly invented by sadists, It's still going to be one more thing I have to write separate stylesheets for, test on, etc...

If it behaves like Safari or Firefox, however, I won't worry quite as much.

Plus, it's unlikely that it will become popular enough to compete with Internet Explorer's mammoth advantage in the Browser Wars anytime soon. But you never know.... I'm keeping an open mind about it for now.

[Jakalwarrior]

Havent tried it, the EULA still kills me with the part about them retaining intellectual property rights to anything you transmit or some such. It is open source though so if anyone wants to compile a version sans lameness I will give it a shot :D in the mean time im still using Opera.

[Ijz]

Knowing Google, this will probably be BETA for a long time...

[ehares]

I was interested enough to read the comic and watch the press conference, and while the technology looks promising, I'll be withholding judgement for the seemingly not nearly complete OSX version. (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

On the subject of web standards compliance and/or comparability to other WebKit based browsers (Safari, etc.): Rendering comparison (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)

[AutisticCuckoo]

Knowing Google, this will probably be BETA for a long time...
I've had the same thought. Google rarely seems to proceed beyond beta. :)

The privacy/integrity issue seems quite questionable. Each URL you surf to is sent to Google, and every incorrect URL as well.

And the first vulnerability (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) has already been discovered.

[LordMaiestas]

Seriously it is faster than all current browsers on the market

In a way all beta will have vulnerability

Unless he or she must be a superb programmer.


Security Wise if you are just a normal user you can go for it.

But it is definitely useful for a heavy user

[muguly]

I like the speed and the most visited sites button on the home page but the new IE8 is pretty cool. (this is coming from a guy who swears by Firefox)

[cRyPT]

I like it: light install; sleek, innovative GUI; fast page loads (As fast as FF, for me at least).

I bet this will take at least 5% of the market by the end of next year.

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Awesome!

[Jakalwarrior]

Now that they fixed the EULA I played with it a bit at work. It does indeed load intensive application pages a lot faster. I dont have to wait 5 seconds on the clunky PC I use at work for yahoo web messenger to re-draw when I switch back to its page from the call control page etc...

[Wufnu]

I really like Chrome. What I don't like are the google ads all over the place. God bless ad-blocking addons.

[LordMaiestas]

I like it when you can just type your search on the link.

[mrdude1228]

I'm using it and loving it. It's very bare-bones, but I use my browser mostly for web applications (besides some forum browsing and keeping up with recent news), most of which being google apps, so it's perfect for me, although I wouldn't recommend it to even my tech-savvy friends just yet. Not enough of the standard features the average joe or jane has come to rely upon.

[Reon]

I think Chrome, at this point, is a nice(fast) browser but other than that, it doesn't seem to have much going for it in my opinion. I'll stick with my Firefox for now. I also noticed that on some pages it doesn't 'crash' but it seems to freeze, and this happens more often than it does in Firefox.

[redbaren]

I will stick to Firefox I miss my ad blocker. And I don't want google knowing were I have been.

[Wufnu]

Yah, I've switched back to Firefox due to "Ads by Google" being on everything. Often, there would be 3 or 4 sets of ads on my window.

[LordMaiestas]

Strange thing i am using Chrome and that using FireFox 3.0 it crash more often than chrome.
And advertisment have not got any except for blogs.

[ThaiGreenTea]

They changed it so that Google no longer knows everywhere you've been/knows everything you type into Chrome.

Not like they needed to know anymore about your internet habits anyway... considering we all use Google for searching.

[lisakki]

Using Chrome right now.

When I first tried Chrome, didn't like it because no ad-block/flashblock/RSS compatability. But when I think back to when I first downloaded adblock, it wasn't because I hated the ads, it was that I thought it'd make the pages load faster. Since Chrome is always faster than Firefox anyway, I thought I'd make the switch.

Opera is my second fav browser though. For me speed>all.

[schwartzie]

I agree w phil, wufnu and others. Ffox w customizegoogle, adblock plus, noscript, finjan addons greatly improve security.

And unless you opt out, chrome runs a keylogger and tracks every stroke everywhere (altho google is getting alot of flak for this, and may ease off.)

Weirdly, chrome does not have a google "sitesearch" button, which I use a lot.

I think, better than the chrome search/address bar is FFox with the ubiquity extension, (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) (four keystrokes runs a google or yahoo search or any of the other 30 or so commands.... Love it)

[AliTree]

i'm using it. i really like it. its extremely fast & has a lot of similarities to opera (which was my love for a long time).

thumbs up.

[lisakki]

I think its kind of funny that huge media outlets like businessweek:

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All make this huge deal about Chrome replacing the OS, and how Google's strategy is so revolutionary, when most review sites rate it as inferior to Firefox and Opera still, and people have been using Google's "revolutionary" open source strategy for years already.

[metamagnet]

Wait, so they got rid of the tracking software built into it?
I know some German programmers took care of it themselves, I didn't think Google would follow suit so quickly lol.

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[schwartzie]

ok. I take it all back. The speed difference is very significant. I've been running it side by side with ffox and ie for a couple of weeks, with the task manager open showing memory and (on my antique home pc w 256 memory) virtual memory usage stats. For simple web browsing to sites that one would expect to be secure, chrome wins. It uses half or less of the memory needed by either ffox or ie. The lack of add-ons is a drag, tho. Does anyone know of any independent developers working on getting rid of the ads or other security problems?

[lisakki]

ok. I take it all back. The speed difference is very significant. I've been running it side by side with ffox and ie for a couple of weeks, with the task manager open showing memory and (on my antique home pc w 256 memory) virtual memory usage stats. For simple web browsing to sites that one would expect to be secure, chrome wins. It uses half or less of the memory needed by either ffox or ie. The lack of add-ons is a drag, tho. Does anyone know of any independent developers working on getting rid of the ads or other security problems?

I dunno if any are working on it.

However, there's bound to be a bunch of add-ons for it later, hopefully to match Firefox's.

[sMoKeY]

I am happy with firefox.

[Fanowene]

I'll give Chrome a try... This is the first time I've heard of it. I almost didn't even read this thread. I hope it's good. :-) Recently I've been having too many problems with Firefox...





Fanowene added to this post, 11 minutes and 27 seconds later...

Ok, I have one problem: I use Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks between all the computers I use. On some of those computers I won't be able to use Chrome because I'm not an administrator. Is there an easy way to update my bookmarks in Firefox and Chrome at the same time? Probably not... I would probably have to open Firefox, synchronize, then re-import all my bookmarks in Chrome... Arg...

[Paul]

Chrome by itself is not what it's about, it's the V8 JavaScript engine. IMO we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the thick client... One day, all software will be online.

[Reon]

I'll give Chrome a try... This is the first time I've heard of it. I almost didn't even read this thread. I hope it's good. :-) Recently I've been having too many problems with Firefox...





Fanowene added to this post, 11 minutes and 27 seconds later...

Ok, I have one problem: I use Foxmarks to synchronize my bookmarks between all the computers I use. On some of those computers I won't be able to use Chrome because I'm not an administrator. Is there an easy way to update my bookmarks in Firefox and Chrome at the same time? Probably not... I would probably have to open Firefox, synchronize, then re-import all my bookmarks in Chrome... Arg...

Well, if you can't find another way I would suggest using Del.icio.us so that you can save your bookmarks online (to an account) and access them anywhere.

[Fanowene]

Well, if you can't find another way I would suggest using Del.icio.us so that you can save your bookmarks online (to an account) and access them anywhere.
I can access all of my Foxmarks bookmarks online too.

[Reon]

I can access all of my Foxmarks bookmarks online too.

Ah, I haven't used foxmarks so I don't exactly know what all it does.

[Fanowene]

I'm using Chrome for parts of my alternate ego now... So I don't have to log out and log back in. ;)

[n00854180t]

Ok silverlight may be ok, but after seeing their 'comic', my brain started ticking.

They're saying, rejig the browser so that it works better with todays requirements. Thats videos, music, games, email, word processors, spread sheets, databases etc...

Ok fair enough, that means Chrome will be running in Windows doing all those things itself.

I pondered, "In this case, why do I need Windows at all?".

I can't think of a good reason that cannot be overcome fairly simply.

Therefore, once Chrome catches, this will happen.

1. BIOS / Motherboard manufacturers begin developing boards that boot to BIOS and connect to the web to make 'Set-up' downloads. No need for boot discs anymore.
2. Google configure Chrome to boot straight from BIOS, straight into the browser, with no need for an operating system as such.
3. PC manufacturers start churning out 'blank' PC's that the user 'creates' their own 'system' on when they switch it on.
4. Google take over the world.
5. Microsoft realise and its too late?

How plausible is that. Microsoft did it to IBM in the 80's, right under their nose!
I seriously doubt this sort of thing will ever become a reality. The reason why? Because people too often overlook what it means to development (please note, my posting this isn't meant to be mean spirited, despite the linked author's intensity).

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[enWTFp]

OS is a much more complex thing than it looks. You need somebody to deal with all your devices and technical parameters of your computer, and that's not the browser. Even to connect to Internet is a very high-level task. It needs a couple of layers of configuring, so I doubt it can be put in BIOS (well, who knows, if they standartize it and we all share unified common wireless around the globe someday...).

But integrating the most important things in Internet, do gets away the attention from OS. That allows people to migrate towards free-OS solutions. Expensive OS like Windows is thus becoming just another gaming platform. (as long as some games are designed to run optimally under it)

The next big revolution will be with the first nano-computers, I think. Gah, they would be literally bugs, and the thought of them creeping around in everything, terrifies me. There's nothing to prevent it, so I just need to get used to this lifestyle somehow. No, I don't think I will. In my opinion, this would subtly create such levels of paranoia hidden in people, that on average they would get more stupid than ever.

[schwartzie]

microsoft guys are scrambling, you can be sure.
meanwhile, my chrome install seems unable to run flash w/out crashing. grrr.

[Alexander]

I was turned off from ever wanting to use it after the initial EULA that said Google owned everything you did in the browser. It was a major blow to my respect for Google.

I'm steering away from stuff like Google docs and whatnot for similar reasons. I still use Gmail though. I'm not really worried about eavesdropping, it's just the principle of it.

[foobar]

In my book, Chrome is anti-trust done right: nobody can tell them off if it's open source. The Windows release was months ago, but there's still no sign of a Linux version -- seems to me they're just taking jabs at Microsoft, but who knows what they're thinking!

I had a quick look at it under Windows; it looks very... Google-ish. The tabs on top were a pain to get to using a touchpad, but other than that, me likes.
Since the fox is being too unreliable as of version 3, when they release for Linux I'll give it a more serious try.

[LiamWolf]

Seriously it is faster than all current browsers on the market

This is a lie. Chrome is still a beta, so it needs to be compared to other betas. Firefox 3.1 beta 2 is faster then chrome (w/ new java script enabled).

I'm using firefox nightly builds (Firefox 3.1 Alpha 3)