Topic: Google Chrome (browser) released

[idolminds]

News

Calling it "Google Chrome", parts taken from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, and its going to be open source. It'll be interesting to see how it works and if people use it. I'll certainly give it a shot.

Get it here.

[Quemaqua]

I won't.  I'm beginning to get very afraid of Google.  They're obviously the next big evil corporation, and I'd very much like to slow their journey there and limit whatever success they find at the end.

[gpw11]

I won't.  I'm beginning to get very afraid of Google.  They're obviously the next big evil corporation, and I'd very much like to slow their journey there and limit whatever success they find at the end.

Yeah, I can get on board with this.  To be perfectly honest, I even trust Microsoft more. 

[ScaryTooth]

Is that a Pokeball?

[scottws]

I won't.  I'm beginning to get very afraid of Google.  They're obviously the next big evil corporation, and I'd very much like to slow their journey there and limit whatever success they find at the end.

Google definitely is approaching the position Microsoft is or was in, but I think that company has a lot more goodwill coming out of it than Microsoft ever has.  Yeah, they could be a big, bad, evil corporation.  But they aren't.

Think about how they alone made big changes on the Internet.  I mean the search engine speaks for itself.  Other ones before like Excite and Altavista were alright but Google was so much better.  And then Gmail.  What was the size limit before?  5 or 10 MB?

[Quemaqua]

So the fact that I have a bigger free email account with more space than I could possibly ever use, I should love them?  I hate all their ad stuff, and most of their new endeavors are going in directions I don't care for.  All this because they made a search engine that dispensed with the bullshit and just kept the single search bar on a clean page.  All they really did was not fuck up with Yahoo did fuck up, and success just snowballed from there.

[Ghandi]

Even if you aren't going to use the browser you can't dislike the move by Google. It creates competition. Lord knows we need some in a market that Microsoft has an 80% share.

[Quemaqua]

True, but it doesn't do us much good when the alternative is exactly the same.  And maybe Google won't be so bad... I'm just talking in generalities, and I don't like where they're headed.

[scottws]

So the fact that I have a bigger free email account with more space than I could possibly ever use, I should love them?  I hate all their ad stuff, and most of their new endeavors are going in directions I don't care for.  All this because they made a search engine that dispensed with the bullshit and just kept the single search bar on a clean page.  All they really did was not fuck up with Yahoo did fuck up, and success just snowballed from there.

I get you, but I don't get you.  You seem to just decide that something popular = something bad and that's that.  It is like with that with you and the iPod.

What do Google's endeavors that you aren't interested in have to do with them being a big evil corporation?  What do their (pretty significantly unobtrusive) ads have anything to do with them being an evil corporation?

I never said you should love them for what they have done but I don't see why anyone would consider them evil.  If you deny what Google has done to really advance the usefulness of the Internet beyond the status quo then you just have blinders on.  Your super-dumbed-down comparison between Google and Yahoo! really speaks volumes about what you really know about the two companies and about the history of the Internet in general.

[Antares]

This "Most visited sites" thing isn't going to look pretty when its full of porn.

[gpw11]

Google definitely is approaching the position Microsoft is or was in, but I think that company has a lot more goodwill coming out of it than Microsoft ever has.  Yeah, they could be a big, bad, evil corporation.  But they aren't.

Think about how they alone made big changes on the Internet.  I mean the search engine speaks for itself.  Other ones before like Excite and Altavista were alright but Google was so much better.  And then Gmail.  What was the size limit before?  5 or 10 MB?

What was the policy on ad bots scanning your emails prior to Gmail?

I wouldn't go so far as to say I think Google is a bad company, but at the same time I don't think Microsoft is either.  My distrust of google stems from their buisness model, the public's willingness to go along with and praise it without ever questioning it, and where that may eventually take us.

[scottws]

What was the policy on ad bots scanning your emails prior to Gmail?

I wouldn't go so far as to say I think Google is a bad company, but at the same time I don't think Microsoft is either.  My distrust of google stems from their buisness model, the public's willingness to go along with and praise it without ever questioning it, and where that may eventually take us.

This is legitimate beef.  I can see how Google's business model could cause distrust.  You gave the example of the bots scanning your e-mail.  I don't speak for anyone but myself, but I find that practice fairly benign.  I completely understand why many people are not a fan of it though because it does cross the privacy barrier a bit.  I mean they are just bots and not actual people reading everyone's e-mail.  To me, Google hasn't done anything yet that sets off any major alarms.  In the future, yes of course they could be bad; who knows what will happen.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand:  the new browser.  I'm not desperate to rid myself of Firefox or anything, but I am becoming wary of its feature creep.  The whole reason it existed in the first place was to be a lightweight, standards-compliant, useful browser.  It's holding up on the standards-compliant end, even forcing Microsoft to do something with IE finally, but now Fx is starting to get really heavy too.  So I might try the new Google browser just to see what it's like, but I'm not one of those people that have my PC full of Google apps either.

[idolminds]

Yeah, hopefully you can edit that.


I mean, I DONT LOOK AT PORN!


Anyway, the browser is ok. Not freaking out over it like a lot of people are, but its certainly not bad. Of course the problem right now is lack of addons. I'm spoiled by AdBlock, mouse gestures, ImgLikeOpera (so I can disable images on a per-page basis). It'll be interesting to see what happens if they add that functionality.

So for now, sticking with Firefox.

[Cobra951]

Adblock is a must.  I'm way spoiled now.  Did this Google thing hijack anything when you installed it?  Did it set itself up as the default browser?  I still want to try it as long as I don't have to undo any damage.

Edit:  I went to get it, then backed off.  Google presents me with a ream of legal terms and a button to download and install this beta in one shot.  I don't like that.  I want to get the full installer on my system, look at it every which way, then maybe install.  So I'll hold off a bit longer.  At a minimum, I need to know what it does to the system.  MS is notorious for trying to own your system, and I want to make sure nothing like that goes on here.

[idolminds]

It doesn't seem to hijack anything. It didnt make itself the default browser, didn't install any extra crap that I can see. It just imported all my stuff from Firefox (history, search engines, bookmarks, etc) though thats optional.

[Cobra951]

OK, thanks.  I'm definitely curious.

[beo]

giving it a quick go now. so far, the only real advantage i can see is that it gives you the largest amount of screen real estate for browsing out of any browser i've used (fullscreen kind of looks like the F11 mode from firefox and IE). as far as privacy goes, it has an "incognito" mode that enables you to browse without any cookies or history being saved - so i guess that's a step up from other browsers too.

haven't found that it does anything particularly cool yet, but it seems functional and it's quite nice aesthetically.

[WindAndConfusion]

Before anyone posts it:

That scare story about Google "owning" anything you upload over Chrome is complete bullshit. It stems from a ludicrous misreading of the Google ToS, and it clearly does not apply to the browser. In any case, Chrome is open source - nothing stops you from downloading the source and building it yourself, in which case there is no license agreement at all.

Please do not post this story so as to save me the effort of calling you an idiot.

[gpw11]

Fuck Chrome.  Digg says that anything you upload through the browser becomes property of Google. I'll post a link.

[Cobra951]

That has been rescinded, apparently.

[gpw11]

Excellent, all is going according to plan.

[ren]

I'm comfortable with Firefox so I don't really see a reason to change. Greasemonkey is the sticking point. If that gets developed for Chrome I'd be more curious.

[ren]

Also, if Google became an evil corporation I'd support them. The more asshole take over the world movies a company does the more I like them. It's like girls and bad boys.

[gpw11]

I can see where you're coming from there, but they'd have to go all out.  None of this "DO NO EVIL" bullshit.

[WindAndConfusion]

There's an Onion article about this, but it's not funny enough to link.

[Cools!]

*Looks forward*

[ren]

I don't like the way it does tabs. Firefox loads new tabs at the end but Chrome does it next to the current tab.

[scottws]

That's how IE does it too.  Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't.  I wish you could re-arrange tabs or have them lined up by website in any browser.

[Xessive]

I generally prefer Firefox's way of doing things.

I love Chrome's minimal interface but I hate the way it handles bookmarks. It requires the bookmark bar, which kinda defeats the purpose of a minimal UI.

It's a great effort, just not quite there yet. It's still in the beta stages so there's a lot of room for improvement.

[Ghandi]

The thing that I love about Firefox is the depth of customization. The whole argument for Google Chrome about maximum screen space is moot because the same thing can be achieved in Firefox. For instance, the way that I have it is like so:



I have tons of screen space with just a few addons.

[Xessive]

The thing that I love about Firefox is the depth of customization. The whole argument for Google Chrome about maximum screen space is moot because the same thing can be achieved in Firefox. For instance, the way that I have it is like so:


I have tons of screen space with just a few addons.

Your Firefox looks almost exactly like mine! The Personal Menu add-on is one of my favourites because it removes the main menu (which can be accessed by keyboard anyway) and gives you a lot more options for your buttons and menus.

The only additional space I got out of Chrome was from the lack of status bar at the bottom. What I like about it in Chrome is that it fades in near the bottom-right only when it's needed.

In general I like the interface concept but I think it needs more work. Firefox is by far my favourite browser. Going with what you said, its customizability is what makes it stand out. I'm still amazed by how different it looks each time I see it on other peoples' systems.

[Ghandi]

I could have sworn I saw an extension to hide the status bar today, but I just tried to find it again and I couldn't.

But yeah, there is so much great stuff out there. I have around 35 extensions installed right now and all of them are great. Just added the all-in-one sidebar and the minimap addon. The minimap addon is pretty neat - just highlight any address and it will provide a map in a sidebar with directions and whatnot from google maps. Kinda neat.

[scottws]

Can't you just turn off the status bar with View | Status Bar?

[Ghandi]

Yeah but then you have to do that all over again when you want to see it. There's no "hover" option.

I personally prefer the status bar - it has lots of useful stuff on it for me.

[scottws]

Yeah, I like the status bar.  My UI is actually pretty beefy.  I have the text menus and I have the bookmarks toolbar on (yes I use it all the time).  I also usually have a bunch of tabs open.

I have noticed something weird about FF and the bookmarks toolbar.  If you right-click | customize the GUI, and you move the "Bookmarks Toolbar Items"  to say the line with the address and search fields or to the bar with the text fields, Firefox isn't smart enough to auto-disable or auto-hide the bookmarks toolbar.  It's just sitting there, blank.

[Ghandi]

I ran into a lot of problems like that when I was trying to consolidate everything into one toolbar. I think with some of the more minor stuff like that they didn't really bother because they knew that anyone who really wanted to do that could find an addon for it. And you can pretty much find an addon for whatever you need to do.

[idolminds]

Well, you can put other buttons on that bar so it kinda makes sense. You could be planning to put something else there, so it doesn't auto-hide. At least you can still disable it.

[WindAndConfusion]

Here's something I realize I desperately need:

How do I mute individual web pages in Firefox?

[Xessive]

Some people are saying that Chrome apparently improves web performance and speeds things up! I haven't noticed anything different myself, does anyone know if this accurate?

[ren]

I didn't notice any difference. I'm not concerned with browser speed though. With broadband everything loads fast enough anyways.