Checking out Google’s new browser, Google Chrome. I’ve been using it for a couple hours now – not enough to give a decent review or anything – except to say that, so far, I like it. And it’s fast.
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Checking out Google’s new browser, Google Chrome. I’ve been using it for a couple hours now – not enough to give a decent review or anything – except to say that, so far, I like it. And it’s fast.
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r€nato
Mac version not yet available :-(
r€nato
…anything that gets people to quit using Internet Exploder is a good thing. IE is the spawn of Satan!
TheFountainHead
Yeah, wtf is up with no Mac client beta launch. Teh Googlez has failed meh!
Dennis - SGMM
This is Beta software and, like most Betas, it has a flaw. The Auto updater pings Google every hour or so for updates. That’s okay except that if you uninstall Chrome for some reason the Auto updater remains – pinging away until the end of time. This will almost certainly be cleaned up in a subsequent release but, I don’t like software that doesn’t have a manual update option.
You might also want to read the EULA (End User License Agreement):
An actual lawyer would have to interpret that one but, it can be read that any content you submit using Chrome is automatically and irrevocably licensed to Google.
I for one welcome our new Google masters.
Joe
Its fast as anything, with 10% of the memory footprint of Firefox 3 (and no rendering issues in my multi-desktop setup)…its my default browser, privacy concerns be damned!
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Its fast and thin, I’ll give it that. However, I miss my Firefox applications.
r€nato
give them time, Doug H. This is Google, I am sure there will be applications developed by them or third-parties.
Ripley
I just grabbed it. A couple thoughts:
* There’s no windows toolbar (File, Edit, etc.), which is kind of weird.
* There doesn’t seem to be a way to move the bookmarks button to a different spot in the toolbar. It’s awkward, to me, having it locked on the right side of the window.
* There’s no Stop button in the toolbar. Odd…
* No way to customize toolbar. Odd…
It seems pretty snappy but it will take some time to get used to it. One cool feature: you can re-size text boxes (like this comment box, for example) which makes it easier to write comments on some sites.
Mary
If it’s faster, less of a resource hog and more stable than Firefox 2.0, it might be worth a try. But let me catch up with Firefox 3.0 first.
(Those of you on FF 3.0: what do you think of it?)
Joe
Ripley…Stop is at the far right at the URL bar…its a “play” icon to go to a page if you’re not in transit anywhere, but once a page is loading, it turns to a stop button.
Good call on the text box re-sizing!
Blue Buddha
Yeah, the lack of tool bars & menu really got to me as well. I understand that Google wants to simplify things and keep everything in one window, but there’s a point when minimalism really cuts into functionality.
As for that EULA Dennis posted about, yeah that’s kinda weird and I’m not sure I like that. They first put “the content”, which you assume is Google Chrome, the interface, logo, source code, etc… which is SOP, but later on it changes to “any content”.
Gus
I can haz Mac verzhun?
Jon H
Dennis wrote: “An actual lawyer would have to interpret that one but, it can be read that any content you submit using Chrome is automatically and irrevocably licensed to Google.”
That isn’t specific to Chrome, it seems to be part of Google’s standard terms of service: http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS (section 11.1)
I imagine that’s in there for things like Google Groups for which it makes more sense, and Google just doesn’t create specific terms for each service or product. Which is kind of annoying.
Ben
I’m sure Chrome will track your every move like the Google search engine does… perfect for the government to use against any citizen they deem a threat for whatever mcmavericky reason they can come up with. Firefox doesn’t track, so that is the way to go.
schlagle
How many thousands of Linux servers does Google run? And they can’t even put out a version of the software for Linux. Annoying…
cain
You mac whiners. Why can’t you use the one true OS? fucking liberals. Us libertarians are using linux.. and we don’t need no stinkin google web browser!
cain
Lee
It seems to have a memory leak.
Twice I’ve had it up in the background for a couple of hours and my harddrive started churning like crazy (probably doing page file swapping). Closed the browser and the churning stopped.
Have not had the time to actually track it down, but it seems odd.
4tehlulz
Obviously, Google is copying the contents of your hard drive so that it can be searched through its portal.
Xanthippas
It’s fast, and that’s a big selling point for me. Also, Balloon Juice seems to actually work when I use it.
lovesick_alien
Downloaded it last night – used it for five or ten minutes and promptly uninstalled it and went back to Opera 9.5.
Chrome loads fast, but big deal. It’s butt-ugly, non-configurable and offers nothing that Opera hasn’t had for years. [Note to Firefox users: Opera was doing everything Firefox does years before Firefox came out].
If you are looking for an alternative to IE [and you should! I myself haven’t used IE for years] – there are plenty of small footprint, full-featured browsers available: Opera and Safari would be my principal recommendations.
My .02
Randall Shane
I’ve been using it off and on for a few hours now.
Not bad overall (fast!), but not having a “home page” button is a problem for me, and I didn’t think it was possible to have a even crappier bookmark list editor than both IE and Firefox, but they pulled it off.
Andrew
I use Maxthon, You can keep your chrome. Maxthon is way better and uses WAY less memory then Chrome, IE and firefox, I have problems with all browses including Maxthon but it still is far and away the best, I have come across.
renniepenny
Lee and 4tehlulz
When I use Chrome, the hard drive is churning away also … it is kind of concerning … have you been able to find any documentation which would enlighten us as to why this is going on?
obviously the churning stops when I close it
Jonathan
MikeJ
I liked chrome for the 10 minutes I used it, but I put it away until plugins show up. I saw the internet without adblock and noscript. Geez, people put up with that everyday?