Yesterday Google released the latest beta of its Chrome browser. It’s wicked fast.
Much cooler, though, are these awesome speed tests they put together. They show that Chrome is nearly as fast or faster than lightning, pink paint accelerated via sound waves, and potatoes.*
Here’s the also-interesting making of video.
To quote @gruber:
“You can argue about whether Chrome is the best browser, but I don’t see how you can argue that it isn’t the one improving the fastest.”
Chrome is also powering up the browser charts with incredible speed, already past all versions if IE except the latest. Yay. May IE6 die a thousand deaths.
This is all good news for all of us (especially me). Using a good, modern, standards-compliant browser should be seen as a civic good on the order of recycling. It’s good for everybody, and it’s easy. There should be a law.
** under extremely controlled circumstances, of course.
It is fast, yes, but unlike other browsers Google gives each browser a unique Client ID that it uses to track your surfing habits (even in safe browsing mode). This of course can be suppressed with third-party tools, but most people don’t use those. Other browsers don’t do that. So, on the one hand you get a zippy and fast browser that, on the other hand, discloses a lot of information about you Google. I personally find that creepy.
@1, thank you! Since it’s from Google I rather suspected the quality browser was the carrot – the stick being some sort of data-mining the Goog could use to build ad sales. I was too lazy to look into it, but will now work to find these third-party tools of which you speak.
Nothing nefarious going on with the Client ID:
http://bit.ly/8ZDjxr
The real reason Google wants to have a browser is that they want to assure that there web apps are never blocked by competitors, and that their web apps have a fast and good user experience. The only way they can guarantee this going forward is by having their own browser.
@3, thanks for trying to assuage with the nice link, but it talks about other things I didn’t know Google was doing and swears on its honor to never misuse. It makes my trust feelers all bendy, so I think I’ll go back to pretending nothing’s happening at all.
If you are really worried about privacy, you should just not use the internet. Any time you do a search not only does the search engine have a pretty good idea of exactly who you are, but they have a pretty good idea of exactly where in the world you are.
The difference between Google and everyone else is that Google tells you exactly what data they collect, and how they use it.
CNN polls show about a 45/45 split for IE and Firefox.
Chrome is still in single digits.
@5, la la la I can’t hear you with the blankets pulled up over my head!
Jesus christ i love when the internet UNDERSTANDS who I am so they can cater to things that I might want to invest money in. and I am totally serious about this. Do you understand how many times you are subjected to advertisements for feminine products, Budweiser, Mcdonalds and pickup trucks & sports cars that are completely irrelevant products to my life. With google & the internet in general I am finally subjected to things I am actually interested in…..bicycles, synthesizers, tools, gardening, sweet shoes, vinyl etc. Do you understand how awesome that is? I don’t have to look at bullshit advertisements I don’t want or need and I get fucking sweet products that Google actually works hard to actually function (not to mention that they care about users input to make the final product more amazing). Fuck television, fuck newspapers, fuck old media that doesn’t give a shit about me or who I am.
@6, who the fuck would even glance at “CNN polls” to determine what web browsers people use, when that information is encoded in every single web hit? There are much more sophisticated tools available. But hey, you keep watching CNN for your valuable tech tips. Asshole.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-…
IE 60%, Firefox 25%, Chrome 7%, Safari 5%, Opera 3%, other 1%.
As someone who is cleanly in that “other 1%” category, I honestly don’t give a shit. And it doesn’t hurt that almost all ads get blocked also.
@fifty-two-eighty
What other browser do you use? Konqueror? Galeon? Midori? Lynx?
@11, Playstation? Lynx?
BlackBerry.
And before you laugh yourselves to death, the 9700 is a pretty amazing little machine. I’m running Word and Excel on it, and in two months it’ll have an OS upgrade that will run Flash.
And it’s a phone, too.
Okay, I’ve used Opera for years and love it with all my heart, and this video doesn’t convince me to switch to Chrome, but it is awesome, and it does make its point extraordinarily well.
@fifty-two-eighty
You’re about to switch browsers then. Blackberry is moving to a WebKit based browser. That’s the same rendering engine that Chrome and Safari use. It’s basically a fork of the KHTML engine from Konqueror.
Correct. Good to see that someone’s paying attention.
@5 “The difference between Google and everyone else is that Google tells you exactly what data they collect, and how they use it.”
Except if you believe that you’re an idiot. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Google would protect your privacy better than say, those programs that used to auto-fill in your information as some kind of “buddy” service, but they aren’t anywhere near telling you exactly what they’re doing with your data when.
I’ll hold out on Google for a while, with firefox, noscript and the VPN I use that doesn’t track my moves (hiding it from the Qwest router that tracks my roommates internet activity) I feel more secure about my privacy on the internet than anyone else. But I’m not under some kind of delusion that choosing Google products will mean I’ll understand what that company is doing with my data any better than I do now. I know my situation, at least with the VPN, puts me in an entirely different class of users, but $70 a year I believe my privacy it worth much, much, much, much more, and I will pay this new yearly fee just to be less known, as again I understand that just on the basis that I use gmail, means the internet really isn’t a private place for me.