Comments on: What do You Think of Google Chrome?

By: bioport

bioport — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:10:29 +0000

the German “federal office for the security in the information technology” (yes that really exists!) gave out a “strong warning” today to abstain from using Chrome at this particular state of development because of its security holes (as demonstrated by Aviv Raff) and because of Google’s general habit of data mining, that is, customer profiling. right or wrong, i found it interesting that a state agency can do such thing.
for you who read German here’s the link [spiegel.de]

By: netster007x

netster007x — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:51:15 +0000

It even asked me at launch if I wanted to pick a default search other than Google, listing Yahoo! as an option. Can’t even do that w/ Firefox.

By: netster007x

netster007x — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:45:31 +0000

OK, this thing is freaking awesome! The minimalist design is perfect, almost exactly same as how I made Fx w/ exts, but better, right out of the box. Comes w/ a truly smart location bar that understands the redundancy of two boxes to get where u wanna go. Leverages awesome features from Opera like tab tear out and moving ‘em between windows, and a smart new tab page, yet w/out the crippling site incompatibilities. Y!Mail works great, and the team already said they’re doing the testing to make it officially supported soon. Incognito is a cool feature. Also, takes Fx’s innovative add bookmark button. The design is seriously so great. It’s minimal, yet includes everything you’d need (ex-no status bar, but hover over a link and see the URL destination). That’s example of where in Fx ext would hide status bar, but wouldn’t smartly show destination URL’s. It’s all set up so you really rarely have to open a window other than main. Downloads show at the bottom, bookmarks search from URL bar. Also, very efficiently uses top part of the window for tabs when maximized.

One annoyance is it scrolls way too far, and not smooth. Also missing a few things like bookmarks organizer, more options, spellcheck… I’d expect that these will be fixed/added before this beta is released.

Until then, I’m really liking Chrome (I’m real surprised they got me, a die-hard Yahooooo!)

BTW: Unrelated. I was trying to do voice chat w/ Vista Y!Msgr, but only allows 1 on 1. I tried istalling XP version, but breaks mic and speakers. What apps support group voice chat on Vista? GTalk?

PS: I can drag the text box bigger! Awesome!!!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:46:00 +0000

Wow, I'm really surprised as to how many of you have tried the browser, but don't like it due to the lack of extension compatibility. That really goes to show that their target market is not existing Firefox users.

Cody wrote:

Google has modified the EULA

That's good to hear because they were fielding a lot of criticism for that.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 19:21:31 +0000

No adblocking, no extensions, no thanks

By: Cody

Cody — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:36:23 +0000

@Rob, Ryan, …

Google has modified the EULA
([arstechnica.com])

They have agreed it was their mistake and it was badly written.

Also, in terms of privacy, since Chrome is open source I’m sure anyone can check whether there are any privacy concerns.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:02:42 +0000

I do not like the EULA for one, that has to be modified – If I blog something using Chrome does that mean Google owns my content?

I also noticed Flash integration was iffy… a couple embedded videos hung on me and they opened fine in Firefox.

and yeah wheres the RSS / Live bookmark support?

It’s a neat idea and all, but those three things alone make a compelling reason for the savvy user to stay with his/her favorite browser for now.

By: bioport

bioport — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:49:03 +0000

i’m surprized that no one has so far mentioned the privacy implications of the browser, which will account for a crucial step ahead in Google’s clients’ profiling. i know that in the States privacy concerns are extremely underdeveloped (if not to say: ignored)–and “Google-fans” in general might not have a sense for this at all anyhow. over here in Europe that will keep a lot of people from using the browser as is, and rightly so.
Patriot Act, FISA, yes and Google; i’m getting tired of having all my habits tracked–no matter for what purpose, and especially when it comes in the guises of “support” “convenience” “comfort” and so on.

By: JC

JC — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:12:15 +0000

I like it – a lot! Taking some time to get used to its very simplicity of use; however it has a lot going for it. What I particularly like is that it is – woosh – very fast!

Love, Light and Peace
JC

By: Anime1

Anime1 — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:56:28 +0000

@Saint Germain I’m with you, Google Chrome is fast and simple but without the add ons you wont it’s not so good so keeping Firefox would be better right now.