Scobleizer: First hour with Google’s new browser
Andrew
· 1 year ago
Chrome's nice, but it's made me realize there are some Firefox extensions (Adblock, Foxmarks, Twitterfox) that I just can't do without.
Public Relations
· 1 year ago
The lack of Extensions will render it useless for techies.
But perhaps it will evolve in the upcoming months.
If this fails, it will really be a blow to their growing egos; it would almost be equivalent to Microsoft's failed MSN search engine as the Google killer
Imran Hussain
· 1 year ago
so far, I'm loving Chrome. Only Hotmail is working in the classic version so far. But this speed and performance, I'm willing to let that go. Google Chrome FTW!
Andrew
· 1 year ago
Also Chrome has (IMO) a MAJOR security problem.
Options->Minor Tweaks->Show Saved Passwords.
Christ on a bike... All my passwords completely open and viewable by the world at large?
Firefox has a similar feature but it can at least be locked with a master password. For people who are in home/work environments and don't/can't religiously lock their workstation while leaving their desk this is disaster waiting to happen.
I wouldn't even install Chrome on my office computer, with this feature all of my super-private data is just one password-reset away from being accessed by any of our IT staff.
Daniel J. Pritchett
· 1 year ago
Since it's open source we'll eventually get Adblock, but I'll still feel funny about it given that Chrome is developed by an advertising company.
srikanth
· 1 year ago
Thumbs up. I liked the fact that it is simple and needs less memory...
rich2k
· 1 year ago
I have to say so far I'm really liking it. IE8 is just slow and Firefix takes too long to load. I'm going to give it a try all day at work tomorrow to see how it goes. The only improvement I can think of would be support for firefox extensions.
wwwhiz
· 1 year ago
Chrome chokes on Evernote.com notebooks... not good.
Jorg
· 1 year ago
I just uninstalled firefox...
Emerson Seiti Takahashi
· 1 year ago
If there is an incompatibility with Google Chrome, it must have the same incompatibility as Safari / Webkit.
It's like Safari, and I'm missing the advanced stuff
Eugenio
· 1 year ago
Hi Robert. On the compatibility issue: as a friend of mine told (http://www.napolux.com): "If you wrote it to run Safari, and tested it on Safari (and there's non reason not to do that, right?), il will also work on Chrome, as they share the same rendering engine"
quirkyalone
· 1 year ago
I like it. I spent quite a few hours of my life fiddling with FF extensions, but I realized that I just can go without them.
Two things I am missing so far: F11 - Fullscreen mode (handy at my 10" laptop) and also Chrome doesn't remember when I increase font on some website. But I think they will sort of stuff like this later on.
tamburix
· 1 year ago
My first impression is that Chrome resembles on Opera browser with very similar interface: "+" button for New Tab and also similar mouse right click menu. But I do miss few FF extensions that are part of my everyday browsing
R. Moose
· 1 year ago
One "basic" feature that I miss was the auto-discovery of RSS feeds. =(
Yeah, I miss the plug-ins, and some tweaks, but c'mon, RSS feeds?!?? =)
Julien Tartarin
· 1 year ago
I like it and will certainly keep using it for some surfing and most of all for the "application" mode : Gmail, Reader are now real desktop apps.
As I'm a PHP developer, I like the search magic with omnibox: 'p' + tab now equals to direct documentation access.
Also, the perfs are really good because it is multi processed. With processors having more and more cores, this is a perfect match between usage and hardware. Single processed browsers are just dying...
I really think it will scare some browsers when it come out to Mac OS and Linux.
Missing: some developer extensions, some general GUI preferences, but that's all !! Not bad at all for the first public day of a beta !
clotheyes
· 1 year ago
Was it too much to expect a 64 bit windows version?
Otherwise, I like it..
Craig Mische
· 1 year ago
I really like the ability to create app shortcuts.
Aaron
· 1 year ago
Ditto the lack of extensions. My workflow is too dependent on a few specific Firefox add-ons for me to switch without alternatives.
Give me a good blogging client, a twitter client, and a media downloading aid (for embedded flash videos) and Google will have a winner. Also, an ad-blocking plugin seems to be a requirement these days -- there are too many intrusive/rollover ads out there.
On the upside, Chrome's speed is simply mindblowing. I'm curious if Firefox could easily adopt Chrome's javascript engine.
Parand Darugar
· 1 year ago
My first hour was similar - impressed with the speed, stability, usability, and looks.
However, as soon as I wanted to do some actual work the lack of firefox extensions made it unsuitable - no IRC plugin, no Firebug (although it looks like it has some Javascript debugging built in), no OpenSearch (site-specific search box, no GreaseMonkey, ...
If Chrome finds a way to integrate FireFox extensions it'll become very attractive.
Bert Armijo
· 1 year ago
After an hour, I've found only a couple things that don't work well in Chrome (unfortunately, one of them is our AppLogic editor), but I have to say that's pretty impressive. IMHO, though, I'm not sure I see the value to moving from FF in the near future.
polyGeek
· 1 year ago
I'm very pleased that they went with the WebKit HTML rendering engine because it adds more weight to Adobe AIR.
Clotheyes
· 1 year ago
It's been a few hours now and I haven't seen one comment on "incognito" mode (aka pRon mode)!
Tumbleweed
· 1 year ago
As I mentioned elsewhere already, this is a great first effort, but it feels more like a browser for a smartphone than for a desktop machine. The lack of FF extensions is almost crippling, but even aside from those, there's a LOT of functionality in the base FF missing in Chrome. Still, FF should've gotten the multithreaded UI done first, THEN developed the rest. It's way too late, now.
I'm assuming that extension developers can use Google Gears to recreate their FF extension functionality for Chrome? I may have to learn Google Gears to recreate base FF functionality for Chrome. *sigh*
I don't know that Chrome's js speed advantage will last once FF 3.1 comes out, with tracemonkey.
Simos
· 1 year ago
I like it, it's simple and extremely fast. I was upset with FF3, too much time to open.
I miss tab mix plus (tab options in Chrome are extremely poor) and other add-ons, i believe Google will do somethiong for that.
I also think that the fact that there are no key shortcuts for "open link in new tab" and "close tab" is a HUGE mistake.
All blogosphere and techsphere is talking about Chrome right now, that's something!
Alex
· 1 year ago
Astounding! Impressively fast! It's just the first public beta guys, cool down. All needed extensions are sure to be found in future releases. Damn, this thing is really fast!
bluvg
· 1 year ago
Just want to point out... it's *still* not a multi-threaded browser per se, at least according to the cartoon. It simply gives each tab its own process (though plug-ins may be spun off in a separate process), which means that your better perf via SMP applies only if multiple tabs are used (which is just as the IE8 beta already does). They are *not* scaling js perf via SMP. There are performance improvements in js, but not because they are using multiple CPUs to do it (at least not in anything I've read).
In my limited experience with it so far today, the performance with heavy-js apps is impressive, but that's about it. Honestly, I find that for my use, IE8 B2 is faster. I guess I don't use so many AJAX-ed sites. It's interesting that IE8 and Chrome are taking the same tab-per-process approach. I like how quickly IE8 B2 recovers a crashed tab, right to the point of the crash, even with the browsing history intact. If you blink, you'll miss it. Heresy perhaps, but I find the features and speed in IE8 B2 to be more compelling than what I'm seeing so far in Chrome. One thing I'm definitely missing already are the improved tab features in IE8 B2, and even simple things like saving an entire group of tabs at once.
Court
· 1 year ago
Youtube is the only site that I have noticed that it is waaaaaaaaaaaay slower than IE or Firefox....kinda ironic actually.
Martin, DevCase
· 1 year ago
As soon as I heard that Chrome was released I read the cartoon, downloaded, installed and tried it out. I must say that I am really impressed. It is a first version but for being that it is solid.
I too miss my Firefox extensions but I'm sure that will get a solution, Gears? It's Open Source folks, no worries, or am I missing something?
I made a review of my first impression with some screen dumps if anyone's interested, click my name.
Nellboy
· 1 year ago
I'm looking for a way to organise my bookmarks (something I do quite often) and Chrome isn't providing me with a way of doing this... I'm not overly impressed to be honest... I kind of like Firefox's functionality too much to change over right now...
Martino Sabia
· 1 year ago
Well it's damn fast and it doesn't hang as his friends IE8, FF3 and Safari does on my old XP machine.
I'm still in love with the fantastic Graphic renderer of Safari, but Chrome rocks for all the rest... and it's reliable, and fast.
I'm not a kind of extension fan, so for me it's not a big deal that Chrome doesn't have (yet) all the extensions ff has. But i think it's only a temporary problem.
BTW for the first time Google has copied something from Microsoft (the domain highlight in the URLs...). It will be a funny time.
Ah... a question: for you Chrome is primary an anti-Microsoft app?
Cory
· 1 year ago
So far, so awesome. Give me a browser that is efficient with memory usage and I'll (temporarily) give up my extensions. However, I believe that part of the problem in the past with memory usage in Firefox was due to improperly written extensions. At this point, the only disappointment for me is that the touchpad on my HP notebook scrolls down but does not scroll up.
Matt Cutts
· 1 year ago
"Unclear compatibility."
Robert, I suspect that we'll see a quick wave of improvements (on both web servers and in Chrome) to fix lots of low-hanging fruit on different websites. But Chrome has been compatible and very robust for me.
Karen
· 1 year ago
I've not tried Chrome yet, but the screen shots show that there's no menu bar. I wonder if Google will be ripped to shreds by the know-it-all geeks for this move the way they ripped Microsoft for removing the menu in IE7 (though it's available on demand). I suspect not.
Prashant
· 1 year ago
I think,that's a bit "out of the way" but "great" move by Google to avoid the menu bar from the browser.Only after i used Chrome,i realized how irrelevant the menu bar is....Just the bookmarking thing is ofter used by me from the menu and now i don't even use that coz just a click on the star makes it for me..There will actually be a tough call between Mozilla and Chrome now,But Google is the Winner in any case
Ben
· 1 year ago
Well currently for me, no site requiring google account authentication works. They all stop rendering half way through the logo. Is it because I've got a French OS (I didn't ask, it just supposed that I wanted Chrome in French - come on guys. My company bought the PC, they chose the language of the OS. PLEASE let me chose languages myself).
Adithya
· 1 year ago
It works pretty nice and in some weird way gives me a feeling that it is a portable browser! I mean, a very small payload on the system and good enough to the job. Asus EE PC Users might love this, a small browser that gets the job done. Either way, I am sticking with Firefox for the time being. I am used to it and I am lazy to make a change in my style.
I got the installation screenshots posted on my site, so if you want to check them out before downloading or installing it, go right ahead. Offcourse, the installation is pretty smooth and fast and you don't actually need a screenshot, I just did it to show that I know how to do a PrtScrn!!!
~Verzion7.com
Brett Nordquist
· 1 year ago
I'm liking it so far. It's fast and quite stable. I do miss a few of my Firefox plugins though. I wrote up a list of my initial thoughts at http://is.gd/2aiD
Allen Harkleroad
· 1 year ago
Yeah it is fast and luckily we design our websites to work both in FF and IE, so they all look great in Chrome.
Sachendra Yadav
· 1 year ago
Google’s Chrome is aimed at Windows, not IE
This is no longer about browser but about the an entire marketplace spread between desktop, mobile and web. With Chrome, Google’s taking a shot at Windows, not paltry Internet Explorer
Quietly impressed with it so far. It's obviously fairly mature within Google - nobody turns out a version 1.0 this good.
Stephan
· 1 year ago
So here are my cons:
Massive security problems: 1) Reports IP back to Google 2) Reports all visited Pages back to Google 3) Gives your PC a unique ID 4) Its easy to start an (evil) java app on your pc, Carpet bomb (see http://raffon.net/research/google/chrome/carpet...) 5) To crash the browser simply visit this site http://lists.grok.org.uk/pipermail/full-disclos... 6) or just type :% 7) Scanns all of your files on the hd. Everything. 8) No stable proxy support 9) GoogleUpdate.exe is omipresent, starts everytime you boot and is not part of the deinstallation, so it stays on you system forever.
And if you want to know what the internet looks like: type about:internets
Dario Salvelli
· 1 year ago
I don't undestrand the EULA: i can't decline the browser's update?
"When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for. "
You can disable that feature. Anyway, address bar content should not be sent to Google by default.
Ed Bradford
· 1 year ago
Google Chrome is nice but it doesn't have mouse gestures and zoom doesn't work. Opera had full page zoom correctly done 3 years ago. Firefox only learned it 2 months ago in FF3. IE only learned it last week (IE8 Beta 2). Google hasn't learned it yet.
Why is it that the big browser consortiums can plagerize freely from Opera and declare their work to be new and innovative? Most of the FF3, IE8 and now Chrome features are in Opera and have been for several years? There seems to be some industry bias against Opera. Why is that?
David tz
· 1 year ago
no RSS feeds in the bookmarks, and no google toolbar? think I'll stick with Firefox. Those are almost basic functions now, let alone no support for FF extensions.
Matt Moran
· 1 year ago
I like it, but again, Firefox's addons have me hooked. If all the main FF addons get ported to Chrome, I'm sold. I'd need: Firebug EverNote Delicious.com Digg ...at the least.
Matt Moran
· 1 year ago
Oh and Ubiquity! *drools*
Joe James
· 1 year ago
ok a big con you missed out!!!!
google claims everything you create using the new chrome browser, including e-mails and blogs, so if you wrote this entry using chromes, its not even yours!
Thankfully you like it, now I can breathe easy as I know it's doomed. Crashy, Google Orwellian tracking, spywareish bad software with security holes. Sounds a winner.
In testing: Slow (Opera and IE8 beta are speed demons in comparison), no FF extensions, feels way way undone, all the open source rotting clunk with zero of the benefits. Reminds me a of mobile browser, trying to play in the big leagues, and not that good at that. Fail.
webtesters
· 1 year ago
no wonder why the media create so many brainless people.
the google crap just doesn't work. which one of google's do you find works?
Adithya
· 1 year ago
I finally got done with an installation test and a performance benchmark and a browsing test. I am not really happy the way it performed, however I will give the devil it's due in saying that for a Beta it does pretty well based on the system. Long story short, here is what I dug up....
Unfortunatelly need it to work with internal as well as external websites. Still needs a loooootttttt of work to be nearly as good as IE
Ilchi Lee
· 1 year ago
Ok, I downloaded it yesterday and I like some of the features. Yes it uses less memory, and the break out tabs (VERY COOL), but I have grown dependent on the Firefox Plugins. No way around this.
J.D. Meier
· 1 year ago
Memory/resource consumption is a big deal for me. My browsers take over my box throughout the day. I haven't tested Chrome yet, but the first thing I'll compare is resource consumption.
All Comments
But perhaps it will evolve in the upcoming months.
If this fails, it will really be a blow to their growing egos; it would almost be equivalent to Microsoft's failed MSN search engine as the Google killer
Options->Minor Tweaks->Show Saved Passwords.
Christ on a bike... All my passwords completely open and viewable by the world at large?
Firefox has a similar feature but it can at least be locked with a master password. For people who are in home/work environments and don't/can't religiously lock their workstation while leaving their desk this is disaster waiting to happen.
I wouldn't even install Chrome on my office computer, with this feature all of my super-private data is just one password-reset away from being accessed by any of our IT staff.
It's like Safari, and I'm missing the advanced stuff
On the compatibility issue: as a friend of mine told (http://www.napolux.com):
"If you wrote it to run Safari, and tested it on Safari (and there's non reason not to do that, right?), il will also work on Chrome, as they share the same rendering engine"
Two things I am missing so far: F11 - Fullscreen mode (handy at my 10" laptop) and also Chrome doesn't remember when I increase font on some website. But I think they will sort of stuff like this later on.
But I do miss few FF extensions that are part of my everyday browsing
Yeah, I miss the plug-ins, and some tweaks, but c'mon, RSS feeds?!?? =)
As I'm a PHP developer, I like the search magic with omnibox: 'p' + tab now equals to direct documentation access.
Also, the perfs are really good because it is multi processed. With processors having more and more cores, this is a perfect match between usage and hardware. Single processed browsers are just dying...
I really think it will scare some browsers when it come out to Mac OS and Linux.
Missing: some developer extensions, some general GUI preferences, but that's all !! Not bad at all for the first public day of a beta !
Otherwise, I like it..
Give me a good blogging client, a twitter client, and a media downloading aid (for embedded flash videos) and Google will have a winner. Also, an ad-blocking plugin seems to be a requirement these days -- there are too many intrusive/rollover ads out there.
On the upside, Chrome's speed is simply mindblowing. I'm curious if Firefox could easily adopt Chrome's javascript engine.
However, as soon as I wanted to do some actual work the lack of firefox extensions made it unsuitable - no IRC plugin, no Firebug (although it looks like it has some Javascript debugging built in), no OpenSearch (site-specific search box, no GreaseMonkey, ...
If Chrome finds a way to integrate FireFox extensions it'll become very attractive.
I'm assuming that extension developers can use Google Gears to recreate their FF extension functionality for Chrome? I may have to learn Google Gears to recreate base FF functionality for Chrome. *sigh*
I don't know that Chrome's js speed advantage will last once FF 3.1 comes out, with tracemonkey.
I miss tab mix plus (tab options in Chrome are extremely poor) and other add-ons, i believe Google will do somethiong for that.
I also think that the fact that there are no key shortcuts for "open link in new tab" and "close tab" is a HUGE mistake.
All blogosphere and techsphere is talking about Chrome right now, that's something!
In my limited experience with it so far today, the performance with heavy-js apps is impressive, but that's about it. Honestly, I find that for my use, IE8 B2 is faster. I guess I don't use so many AJAX-ed sites. It's interesting that IE8 and Chrome are taking the same tab-per-process approach. I like how quickly IE8 B2 recovers a crashed tab, right to the point of the crash, even with the browsing history intact. If you blink, you'll miss it. Heresy perhaps, but I find the features and speed in IE8 B2 to be more compelling than what I'm seeing so far in Chrome. One thing I'm definitely missing already are the improved tab features in IE8 B2, and even simple things like saving an entire group of tabs at once.
I too miss my Firefox extensions but I'm sure that will get a solution, Gears? It's Open Source folks, no worries, or am I missing something?
I made a review of my first impression with some screen dumps if anyone's interested, click my name.
I'm still in love with the fantastic Graphic renderer of Safari, but Chrome rocks for all the rest... and it's reliable, and fast.
I'm not a kind of extension fan, so for me it's not a big deal that Chrome doesn't have (yet) all the extensions ff has. But i think it's only a temporary problem.
BTW for the first time Google has copied something from Microsoft (the domain highlight in the URLs...). It will be a funny time.
Ah... a question: for you Chrome is primary an anti-Microsoft app?
Robert, I suspect that we'll see a quick wave of improvements (on both web servers and in Chrome) to fix lots of low-hanging fruit on different websites. But Chrome has been compatible and very robust for me.
I got the installation screenshots posted on my site, so if you want to check them out before downloading or installing it, go right ahead. Offcourse, the installation is pretty smooth and fast and you don't actually need a screenshot, I just did it to show that I know how to do a PrtScrn!!!
~Verzion7.com
This is no longer about browser but about the an entire marketplace spread between desktop, mobile and web. With Chrome, Google’s taking a shot at Windows, not paltry Internet Explorer
I’ve covered this in more detail on my blog
http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/googl...
Massive security problems:
1) Reports IP back to Google
2) Reports all visited Pages back to Google
3) Gives your PC a unique ID
4) Its easy to start an (evil) java app on your pc, Carpet bomb (see http://raffon.net/research/google/chrome/carpet...)
5) To crash the browser simply visit this site http://lists.grok.org.uk/pipermail/full-disclos...
6) or just type :%
7) Scanns all of your files on the hd. Everything.
8) No stable proxy support
9) GoogleUpdate.exe is omipresent, starts everytime you boot and is not part of the deinstallation, so it stays on you system forever.
And if you want to know what the internet looks like: type about:internets
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/privacy.html
"When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for. "
You can disable that feature. Anyway, address bar content should not be sent to Google by default.
zoom doesn't work. Opera had full page zoom correctly done 3 years ago.
Firefox only learned it 2 months ago in FF3. IE only learned it last week (IE8 Beta 2). Google hasn't learned it yet.
Why is it that the big browser consortiums can plagerize freely from Opera
and declare their work to be new and innovative? Most of the FF3, IE8 and now Chrome features are in Opera and have been for several years? There seems to be some industry bias against Opera. Why is that?
Firebug
EverNote
Delicious.com
Digg
...at the least.
google claims everything you create using the new chrome browser, including e-mails and blogs, so if you wrote this entry using chromes, its not even yours!
check out this blog:
http://tinyurl.com/6dzhzm
In testing: Slow (Opera and IE8 beta are speed demons in comparison), no FF extensions, feels way way undone, all the open source rotting clunk with zero of the benefits. Reminds me a of mobile browser, trying to play in the big leagues, and not that good at that. Fail.
the google crap just doesn't work. which one of google's do you find works?
http://verzion7.com/?p=56