Google's Chrome browser was launched yesterday and it's already popular. One source is saying that Chrome already has a market share of 2.6%, not bad growth for one day.
However, minor annoyance of no GNU/Linux port aside, there are some big problems with Chrome:
- Google gets perpetual, exclusive rights to all content you submit, post or display on or through Chrome;
- Google update is installed along with Chrome and needs a registry edit and removal of a scheduled task to remove it;
- every install of Chrome gets a unique ID, when a user logs in to their Google account (using Chrome), the account is permanently linked to the Chrome installation;
- all URLs including any mis-typed URLs entered into the address bar are sent to Google (however, this may be switched off);
- an enterprising Slashdotter has looked through the source code of Chrome and found that it transmits almost everything the user does, including opening and closing tabs, memory usage, whether the window is maximised, etc. (frankly though, this needs checking and confirmation);
I have an inkling that most won't be worried about these issues until something like the Viacom vs. Youtube court case comes around again. If they didn't collect the data in the first place, it wouldn't be a problem. 
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decibel.places posted this at 21:40 — 3rd September 2008.
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ah, but that is Google's business model - data
mostly (they say) as anonymous data..
What if you use Tor/Vidalia? guess the data collection is coded right into Chrome..
There is a option to "share" data with Google or not - what is the difference?
I have to say that Chrome is blazingly fast, on a bloated Dreamweaver table site (or a pumped up Drupal site with lots of Flash widgets (yah, my personal site...))
What about other companies? - I installed itunes, and Apple alerted me when Safari for Windows was available (I was glad) and keeps bugging me - but turning it off is probably simpler than removing Google update
Like it or not, I think we are headed for more and more data collection and profiling as a way of life, for one thing, I think that will be the basis for the "next" wave of Web 3.0 and personalized mass sites are not very workable without a detailed user profile, with lots of data (what topping you like on your pizza, etc)
It's no longer about "pushing" content and information, but also about "pulling" it too...
Greg K posted this at 21:45 — 3rd September 2008.
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Regarding #1, it looks like already did an Undo on that. The link from the article to the EULA (http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html) is an EULA with the extra terms no longer there...
-Greg
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JeevesBond posted this at 22:09 — 3rd September 2008.
He has: 3,720 posts
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Nice catch, apparently Google copy and paste most of their EULAs!
They made it into the Most Laughable Terms of Service on the Net article on Valleywag before changing it though.
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pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 22:56 — 3rd September 2008.
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I wonder if the EULA was even serious. Remember that this is still beta software.
I must say that the little privacy is an issue, with me at least. It's not anonymous if it's linked to your Google account.
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ymedia posted this at 06:23 — 4th September 2008.
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I don like chrome. Mozilla is good for me
Megan posted this at 20:07 — 4th September 2008.
She has: 10,369 posts
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Looks like they're backtracking on this one too:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-license-agreement/
So they do have that in some of their other EULA's? and they thought that it made sense there??
Megan
My web design blog
decibel.places posted this at 02:10 — 5th September 2008.
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I just spent a *few hours* "troubleshooting" php/mysql code that writes a word doc to the filesystem (in Drupal) -
in Chrome, the doc would display properly as an echoed html doc, but the word doc was missing the right column below the first cell (left and right column of the table are drawn from different db tables)
Finally I had the *bright* idea to run the code in Ffox (where I originally developed the code), which produced the word doc properly
?!
demonhale posted this at 04:38 — 5th September 2008.
He has: 3,301 posts
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I think we need to watch out for more catch-it from Chrome... But I agree it's pretty fast... Won't trade my FF at the moment though...
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Bompa posted this at 09:35 — 5th September 2008.
He has: 27 posts
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Chrome, I just don't get why folks would use it. I mean most people
online think MSIE is the only browser in existence. LOL
Me, I don't use anything Google, but maybe that's due to my line of
work; the seo bootcamp.
later,
Bompa
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andy206uk posted this at 22:43 — 8th September 2008.
He has: 1,754 posts
Joined: Jul 2002
Chrome, I just don't get why folks would use it. I mean most people online think MSIE is the only browser in existence. LOL
Google have two of the top three most visited sites in the WORLD (Google.com #2, Youtube.com #3 according to Alexa). All it takes is for them push Chrome on those two properties for a couple of days and they can up their install base hugely (they're all ready pushing the beta on Google.com - they could make that ad much bigger if they wanted).
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Chrome overtakes Safari and Opera within a couple of months and start making headway towards taking out Firefox before long as well.
In all honesty, I don't care if it does, because it'll make Mozilla, Opera and Apple work harder to compete and hopefully take a chunk out of the IE6 install base as well.
Well... we can dream can't we?
Andyk
Blog of a Web Designer
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
Norted posted this at 09:36 — 5th September 2008.
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Isn't all services exept AdWrods and Google the search engine in the so called "beta" modus?
I tought the main reason for this is because everyone know that "Beta" means "Everything is your responsibility"
fantastvik posted this at 14:21 — 8th September 2008.
They have: 19 posts
Joined: Sep 2008
thats scary! i shifted to chrome after using FF for almost two years. i am shifting back to my good old FF. i hope that is safe? is there this thing with FF also?
decibel.places posted this at 23:24 — 8th September 2008.
They have: 917 posts
Joined: Jun 2008
Odd html email rendering problem in Chrome
Attached, same email viewed in Yahoo Mail in Chrome (breaks up) and Opera 9.52
Interestingly (?) the Chrome "full message" view was fine
I had a weird problem with Opera 9.5x in Vista Home Premium (b4 the Chrome release...) - when Opera is in a folder named "Opera" it crashes on Yahoo Mail (supposedly fixed in 9.52) but rename the folder to Opera952 for example and it is fine (?)
Also, since installing Chrome, Firefox3 has been acting funny, it freezes (mostly when system goes to sleep and comes back) and need to close firefox.exe AND end the process in task manager -
Anybody else notice any problems since installing Chrome?
(BTW Vista Print is very cool, I designed my own business cards and got return address labels AND a tshirt with my theme... their HTML emails are often entertaining, pssst - that's where I got my monkey!)