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John Brandon

Web 2.0 Watcher

Review: Chrome is Google 2.0

56 comments

TAGS:Chrome, Google, Review
IT TOPICS:Desktop Applications, Internet, Software

The Google Chrome beta is a powerful new browser that loads Web pages quickly and accurately. As some bloggers have noted, it's not perfect and can break sites (for example, by using alt tags). CNET says Chrome is faster than all other browsers, and my experience matches these claims. It reveals that Google intends to break a Microsoft stranglehold on the desktop, but the user experience on Chrome feels a bit like walking on a sheet of ice in your slippers: a bit temporal and shaky.

I don't think Google defines "beta" the same way every other company does. To them, beta means a relatively stable app that has all or most of the core features in place. If Adobe defined the word beta this way, they would be out of business by now - to them, a beta means "crash happy" early test.

Chrome has not crashed on me at all. What it has done is make me want to switch back to Firefox to do some "real" work. I can't really explain why. I don't like the tabs being above the address bar because it feels like they are floating in space. Other things bug me, too. I can drag-and-drop a URL onto the "bookmark bar" but I can't click and hold on the Gmail icon and drag it there, like you can with Firefox. The icon for Chrome looks too much like the one for Google Desktop and not that distinct. I like having a separate search box, and having just one for URLs and search is jarring.

With just a handful of desktop-bound apps including Sidebar and Desktop Search, Google has never strayed too far from the online world where they make most of their money by selling ads. Chrome, released around midday Tuesday, could be their last official desktop app. It points to a day when the operating system is obfuscated by the browser, which runs all the apps you really need. So will Chrome make a dent in Microsoft's market share or scare away the nice folks at Mozilla?

I think it's too soon to know whether Chrome will be a success. It could be one of the most glorious burn-outs in tech where we look back on 2008 and say - that's when Google tried in vain to capture the browser market. But Google has a history of stomping the competition even though the service (see Gmail as an example) does not offer nearly as many features (see Yahoo Mail).

Here's why Chrome probably won't just fade away. For starters, it lets you grab tabs and drop them away from the main browser window. They run as a separate app that uses a separate portion of RAM. You can also create a shortcut to an app using a menu option and then run it without the address bar. It looks amazingly extensible and flexible, which means it could have a bright future.

Chrome is a first glimpse at Google 2.0, an effort to make cloud computing ubiquitous and the desktop a thing of the past. For anyone who has wondered whether Google will release an operating system, the short answer is: yes, they just did.

And here's the proof. When you install Chrome, it asks you if you want to use Google as the search engine. You might think, well - of course! But what Google is saying with that question is: we intend to own the Web, and when we do, we don't want to get sued for monopolistic practices. Wow.

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Google Chrome is Great!

Submitted by Jontheblogger on September 12, 2009 - 10:29 P.M.

I think you should try out all web browsers before you settle for one. Check out these reviews I've found on this website.

http://www.internet8.info

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Looks like somone is borrowing your writing or vice versa

Submitted by Richard on September 4, 2008 - 12:10 P.M.

http://laddiweb.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html

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Plagiarized content

Submitted by Joyce Carpenter on September 4, 2008 - 6:11 P.M.

Thanks very much for letting us know. Having content lifted from our site by people incapable of thinking for themselves is a big problem. We appreciate the pointer very much.

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Chrome eula

Submitted by John on September 3, 2008 - 4:40 P.M.

There are some pretty "concerning" facts in Chrome's EULA.

http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

“1.1 Your use of Google’s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the “Services” in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google. “Google” means Google Inc.”

Chrome is google software…now, let’s see what awaits us further…good news on paragraph 9.4:

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.

This looks cool, we are safe ! but wait…
“Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11″? what’s that? let’s go check that too…

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

This spells to me like this: Google has rights to do whatever they like with EVERYTHING you do in this browser - posts on your blog, web e-mail, ANYTHING you do in Chrome, you give google permission to “reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute”.

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Awesome, with a few complaints

Submitted by BJ on September 3, 2008 - 12:56 P.M.

What made me laugh a little is that the new browser plugin for Google Earth can't be installed on Chrome, and Chrome won't run embedded Earth natively (I half expected that to be built in).

My summary is that this is an amazing start for being just version 0.2. I can't wait to see what kind of awesomeness they will build into and upgrade this app to as they go along and hopefully make it to version 1.0 one day. That will be the most stable 1.0 program I've seen, I imagine.

The current issues I have are these:
- I need my plugins, specifically Adblock.
- Certain home-grown web-apps essential to my job are not compatible with Chrome yet, so much that I can't actually use the tools
- I kind of miss having the tabs under the controls and closer to the page. I don't really care that this design implies that the controls are independent per tab... implication shouldn't override practicality.

Overall, I love it, and I hope they fix all the issues everyone has so far. I imagine in about 2 years they will have as large a chunk as Firefox, if not more.

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One thing I don't understand

Submitted by Kramer on September 3, 2008 - 11:35 A.M.

One thing I don't understand about Google is their motto. Don't be evil. Google is going down the same path that Microsoft did. That is reinvent the wheel, what everybody else had done. Chrome is a me too product. Google could have left the browser work to mozilla and worked on something else new. Their google earth was innovative, but just another browser with the sole idea of killing Microsoft? What happened to their motto "Don't be evil"?

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this can only be said if the

Submitted by Anonymous on January 29, 2009 - 10:00 P.M.

this can only be said if the wheel has been invented...
if telepones were considered wheels,then cellfones would never have been developed.
-boris

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missing the point

Submitted by BJ on September 3, 2008 - 1:09 P.M.

I think the reason Google is developing this browser is that no one is developing the right kind of browser for today's internet. Back when tabs were first introduced into browsers it should have been multi-threaded. They've helped the Mozilla folks out for a while but they haven't been able to get the browser up to what it should be either.

The reason they needed to, and in fact were inevitably going to create their own browser is because they are one of the few companies with the resources and payrolled IQ to make the "right" browser for today. Firefox is great, but it's a huge memory hog, and one tab can freeze up the whole app. That's unacceptable, even for today's standards. The fact that Google has the entire Internet at their fingertips and literally (and figuratively) in their pocket automatically making them the best candidate to develop a browser.

Basically, I don't see this as a move to squash MS, or cut out Mozilla. It's a case where they see they can fill a need, for the world, that no one else is filling, and give it away for free. To me that seems to fit right into the "Do no evil" motto.

And think about it, they are making it open source. Anyone, including Mozilla and MS (who won't because of their pride) can take this code and build on it and potentially squash Google out of browser market with their own code. They won't, because Google has more talent, less bureaucracy , and an actual strategy.

Read this and it should better help people understand why this is a necessary good:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

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Just for everyone's

Submitted by Anonymous on April 12, 2009 - 9:24 A.M.

Just for everyone's info...it's not that Google had this innovative idea of putting each tab in it's own process just now ... it's just that until now the computers didn't have enough memory to support such a model. Check the memory usage of Chrome with 10+ tabs open and compare it with Firefox, IE7, IE8 and you will know what I mean...Chrome is the biggest of all memory hog!!!
But having independant processes for each tab has just started to make sense with Vista as normal computers now have at least 2 GB or even 4 GB memory. But still chrome is a beta product and Google are not gonna be ready with it (along with it's memory requirement) for long as they know for the masses the memory usage of Chrome is still not acceptable but it will get there in time.

PS: IE 8 (from beta version but even in released version) actually has a hybrid model of independant process for tabs...and as the large memory becomes the norm I'm sure IE8 and Firefox will comfortably move to independant processes.

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Firefox search bar

Submitted by John on September 3, 2008 - 11:25 A.M.

I tried chrome. It is very fast and crisp. I especially like the developer tools where you could view the source. That is a far better job than firefox. But what I miss is the little search bar that is on the right of the address bar in Firefox where you could select the search engine from a list and type in the word to search. It is very handy for example to go between amazon, ebay, wikipedia etc. I want to be able to bring up wikipedia or amazon on a key word without having to goto that site first. Also I am not sure how much personal search info is passed back to google everytime it does an update of the software.

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