Google Chrome - To Love, or Not to Love?

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
You know that technology is really ingrained into our lives when all the headlines are filled up with Google Chrome-related news. You'd almost swear it was an Apple product! Even my mom, who's not high on tech, asked me on the day of release if I used it yet. Somehow, the browser was newsworthy enough to appear on TV news, although I'm not sure what channel that was on.

Well, are people still excited about Chrome as they were on day one? Well, it's hard to say, and it seems to be those who are happy, still have their reserve on why not to use it. For me, it might be the privacy policies, but I'm still waiting until the final launch before those are finalized, in hopes that they change for the better. Another reason might be the fact that it already has a DoS (thanks Don for the link) vulnerability. That sure didn't take long, but it's unsurprising. Other browser launches have suffered similar fates.

A few others are still pumped though, and even created some 'top lists', like Mashable!, who found seven things to really like about Chrome. My favorite might be Lifehacker's list of Firefox extensions that enable the best features of Chrome... in Firefox, which you can see the link and quote for below.

In way of fun statistics, yesterday, our traffic saw Chrome usage of 5.44% of all visitors, while today, (first ten hours), we saw 3.34%. Small decrease, but is is a beta after all. It's clear that there are fans though, and people will continue to use it until it drives them nuts with a killer caveat. I'm still waiting for follow-up beta releases though. Google might be doing something great here (minus the privacy policy, of course). If you haven't already, be sure to goggle over our in-depth first-look.

google_chrome_090308.jpg

Apart from a few specific issues (namely process management), many of Chrome's best features are already available in Firefox 3, proving yet again the power of extensibility. From incognito browsing and the streamlined download manager to URL highlighting and improved search, let's take a look at how you can bring some of Google Chrome's best features to Firefox.


Source: Lifehacker
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Yes, this made TV news, local news, local paper, and Wall Street Journal not only had an article about it, but they had a second article testing it against IE8, Firefox, and Safari. ;)

I'm not using Chrome to try it, but apparently if you type about:internets into the address bar it opens up something...

There's already even a Vista black theme for Chrome out now. Link
 

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
What impresses me is that every day since the launch, usage on our site has been just under 5% (even today). People are obviously keen to keep on trucking with it, and I'm impressed that there has been no real sign of slowdown, at least on our site.

I wonder what the average will be a week from now. It's going to be interesting.
 

Kougar

Techgage Staff
Staff member
Yeah, but I don't think it is that unexpected? It's the Google effect. Google has created enough good or useful things that people are willing to make the attempt to try it, and certainly plenty more than the number of people that tried Safari for Windows.

Personally I'll wait until they complete the bookmarks section that they said will be added in a future release... a big reason I won't use Firefox 3 is because I have the full ability to sort, view, modify, or do anything I could want to my massive pile of bookmarks from within a tab inside the browser window. In addition to indexed bookmark searching, it stores all the bookmarks, info, notes, etc into a single small database file.

I'll confess Firefox 3 finally appears to have copied much of the features, but it's not as seemlessly integrated yet and requires you keep the library window open. It's certainly much better than IE though, which is what FF used to copy from...
 
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