HitChrome

Back in September of 2008 Google entered the web browser arena with the Beta release of their new Chrome browser. On the Google Chrome web site, this explanation is posted regarding why they chose to build Chrome: “So much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.”

Millions have downloaded and tried Chrome already. It has a unique interface and some innovative features. However, within days of its release it was found to have a couple security issues. In Google’s defense, this is a Beta version of the software and Chrome was scrutinized heavily by security researchers since it was from Google- the Web company. But, those flaws are not reason enough to not check Chrome out.

You can read overview of the security features of Google Chrome, which also contains a link to download the latest version of the software if you care to take it for a spin.

2009 will be another year where internet browsers will compete for market share.

The past year has seen some exciting changes in the browser market with at least one new player giving the market a shake and an old competitor still battling away with its latest release.

In theory the browser market is commoditised. There is not much money to be made from building a new browser, no matter how good it is. At least that is the theory. But the past year has shown that the browser wars are still in full swing. It’s just that now the stakes are even higher and even non-traditional browser makers are getting in on the act.

A few months ago we got a taste of that as Google released beta versions of its Chrome browser. Although it only worked on Windows machines at launch time, Chrome quickly made its presence felt. Within days of its release there were reports of webmasters seeing more than 2% of their traffic coming from Chrome users and the W3C now pins Chrome’s market share at 3.1%. Which is impressive in a market where after years of competing Opera Software has just 2.3% market share.

It also good news for Google, who clearly is hoping that building a browser optimised for its own online applications will make it a worthy competitor against the likes of Microsoft who has been a little slow coming to market with an online offering.

Microsoft, on the other hand, looks unlikely to release its latest browser, Internet Explorer 8, before the second quarter of 2009. Although it has been in beta for the best part of the year, Microsoft now says that a final beta will be issued in the early part of 2009.

Unfortunately, this could be a little too late for Microsoft. Its competitors are getting stronger by the day and by early 2009, Chrome will be out of beta, Firefox will have racked up millions of new users and Opera will have released its version 10 browser.

Since its launch, Google’s new web browser, Google Chrome, has been applauded for its lightweight look and feel and for the speed of its JavaScript engine. Although the browser still lacks support for things like RSS and browser add-ons, the company has already ripped off the beta label, a move that was probably made in preparation for Google’s upcoming bundling deals with PC manufacturers.

Despite Chrome’s popularity, there are some of us who are a bit uncomfortable with giving Google yet another avenue to track our user data. Luckily, we have several options which can be used to protect our privacy while still enjoying this slick new web browser.

Chrome Privacy Guard was the first tool to automatically delete the unique Client ID that Google assigns to your Chrome installation. With this tool, that ID is automatically deleted before each run of Chrome. To use Chrome Privacy Guard, you launch an executable file ChromePrivacyGuard.exe instead of launching the browser itself. The tool cans the “Local State” file inside the Chrome directory and removes all information regarding the Client ID. It then automatically starts Chrome.

Like Privacy Guard, UnChrome also removes your unique ID from the browser, instead replacing it with a null value. This is a bit more convenient because UnChrome only needs to be run once. After you download and run the tool, you will see a pop-up advertisement for the developer’s other applications, but again, it’s only a one-time thing. Afterwards, your browser will forever have the unique ID removed.

Iron is a fork of Chrome’s Chromium core, the open source project behind Google Chrome. Developed by a German software company SRWare, Iron goes even further than the above tools to protect your privacy. Where the other tools simply remove the unique ID from Google’s version of the Chrome browser, Iron is actually its own, separate browser. In addition to removing the unique ID, Iron also makes sure that no user-specific info is sent to Google, including crash reports. When you enter in a URL incorrectly, Iron does not present any alternative error messages like Chrome does. Finally, Iron does not come bundled with the Google Updater tool, which checks with Google to see if there are any new updates for the Google products you have installed.

Do you use any of these tools to protect your privacy? If so, share your experiences or your preferences in the comments.

Several computer vendors are exploring the possibility of including Google Chrome as the default Internet Web browser of choice. Most PCs and laptops traditionally come with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer installed.

Google Inc is talking with PC vendors to include its Chrome Web browser new desktop PCs, notebooks, and laptops. New PCs customarily come with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the default browser. The Microsoft operating system, such as Windows and Vista, include IE as the default.

Even so, top companies such as Dell, HP, Acer, and Toshiba are showing interest in a pre-install agreement with Google. The agreement would replace Internet Explorer as the default Internet Web browser with Google Chrome.

“We could work with an OEM and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed,” Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management at Google, said in a statement.

The search engine giant wants to gain more acceptance for its latest project by pre-installing it on new PCs. Some vendors already like the idea.

Internet Explorer currently leads the market which critics say having the browser set as a default is the primary reason. In fact, IE has been the default Internet Web browser for over a decade.

Google Chrome recently came out of beta. New versions of the browser will be released in January 2009 for Linux and Mac computers.

Google’s strategy to update its browser more frequently has helped the software to jump back over the 1% mark again. Chrome’s market share and the release of the final version of the browser helped the software to bounce back.

Chrome’s market share does not reflect the media attention the software usually receives and the browser needs still time to grow until it could be considered a “major” browser that can compete with the big boys. If we believe data published by Net Applications, there are seven times more Safari users than Chrome users, twenty times more Firefox users and about 70 times more IE users globally.

But it seems that Google has found an effective strategy to increase its market share – frequent updates. Google began pushing its updates more often in late October, not quite two months after the browser’s initial release and was able to slow the browser’s market share decline and grow its share again. According to Net Applications, Chrome hit a record 1.16% three days after its release on September 4 and hit its lowest share at 0.69% on October 15.

Curiously enough, this was about the same time when Microsoft was able to almost match Chrome’s market share with its IE8 beta 2 release, which is pictured in our chart as well.

Last week’s release of Chrome 1.0 pushed Chrome back above the 1.0% mark for the first time since September. Chrome saw a 1.05% share on Saturday and 1.09% on Sunday. However, it appears that Google has now created a solid user base from where it may be able to grow.

Google’s Chrome scored lowest in a test of password management security, but other browsers didn’t fair much better. The security expert found security flaws in the Firefox 2 password management two years ago. He tested Google Chrome during its beta period and Chapin’s company, Chapin Information Services (CIS) had reported three bugs in Chrome that were not fixed by release time. Chapin said that, along with seventeen other issues in Chrome’s password manager, they created “a toxic soup of potential vulnerabilities that can coalesce into broad insecurity”.

Safari 3.2 for Windows was also added to the CIS testing, and “essentially tied for the worst password manager” with Chrome. CIS’s tests are made up of 21 specific checks to ensure the browsers are not easily fooled into giving up the password information that they have remembered for the browser user.

Phishers could exploit these flaws to trick a browser into disclosing a username and password for a third parties site.

Interestingly, Google Chrome was the only major browser that passed one test; not filling in a form when auto-complete is set to off, but this only brought its score up to 2, the same score as Safari. No browser scores well on Chapin’s tests.

The “winner” was Opera 9.62, which only passed 7 of the 21 tests. CIS have a test suite which allows users to evaluate their own browser against the CIS tests.

The Official Google Blog stated that the full release comes after 14 product updates and that Chrome 1.0 is more stable and much faster than former one.

Video plug-ins optimization is one of the biggest improvements users wanted from Google Chrome. The browser had always had glitches in playing videos, even from Google’s subsidiary, YouTube. The official blog states that these bugs were fixed in the final release. Furthermore, the blog states that the “V8 JavaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster” on Chrome 1.0 compared to its first beta release.

PC Magazine reviewed the browser yesterday and reported a 24 percent increase in speed, Chrome being much snappier than Internet Explorer and comparable with Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Beta 2. Yet, the reviewer reported that Google Chrome still uses the biggest amount of RAM, almost double than Firefox, when opening complex websites.

Google Chrome has been continuously updated since its initial release in September 2008. However, there are still issues that Chrome’s users have to cope with. Among the most important flaws of Google Chrome is the inability to access websites like Windows’ Hotmail because the browser is still not officially supported. Also, it is somehow surprising that even the company’s own Google Zeitgeist 2008 Website isn’t properly displayed in Google Chrome.

In the near future, it is expected that Google will release Linux and Mac version of Google Chrome, along with RSS support and an extensions platform.

Google has claimed that in the 100 days since it unveiled the beta version of its Google Chrome browser, it has attracted more than 10 million active users on all seven continents.

Since its release, Google has released 14 updates to the product, and as of today, the company is removing the ‘beta’ label from the browser.

“Google Chrome is a better browser today, thanks to the many users who sent their feedback, and the many more who enabled automatic crash reports, helping us rapidly diagnose and fix issues,” said Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management at Google.

Among the problems that had to be fixed during the beta period were video and audio glitches.

One of the early distinguishing factors about Google Chrome was the speed of the browser in terms of scripting, and Google says this has been boosted 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark. “And there’s more speed to come,” Pichai said.

Bookmark features were a top request from early adopters, and Google’s engineers have made it easier to switch between another browser and Chrome with bookmark import and export features. Read the rest of this entry »

Google is actively expanding the functionality of its open source Chrome browser, which launched earlier this year. The latest features under active development are made available through the developer update channel prior to public release.

The latest developer channel builds include a full bookmark manager with a built-in search feature and support for organizing bookmarks into nested folders. I tested this feature by importing my Firefox bookmarks. The new bookmark manager appears to be loosely modeled after the one in Firefox. Like the rest of Chrome, it is still relatively minimalistic but it gets the job done. The sidebar displays the expandable folder heirarchy and the main pane shows a list of all of the bookmarks in the selected folder. Unlike Firefox, Chrome’s bookmark manager does not have an editing panel. You can modify a bookmark through the bookmark manager by right-clicking and selecting edit.

Chrome users who want to help test and get an early look at new improvements can use the Chrome channel chooser to select the developer channel. Instructions on how to do this are available at the Chromium documentation web site. For more information about the latest features and bugs, see the developer release at the Chrome release blog. Keep in mind that the developer channel versions are unstable testing builds and aren’t intended to be as robust as official releases.

Perhaps the biggest threat to Google’s increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear, justified or not, that Google’s broadening reach is giving it unchecked power.

This scrutiny goes deeper than the skeptical eye that lawmakers and the Justice Department have given Google’s proposed ad partnership with Yahoo. Many objections to that deal are financial, and surround whether Google and Yahoo could unfairly drive up online ad prices.

A bigger long-term concern for Google could be criticisms over something less tangible — privacy. Increasingly, as Google burrows deeper into everyday computing, its product announcements are prompting questions about its ability to gather more potentially sensitive personal information from users.

Why does Google log the details of search queries for so long? What does it do with the information? Does it combine data from the search engine with information it collects through other avenues — such as its recently released Web browser, Chrome?

Data gathered through most of the company’s services “disappears into a black hole once it hits the Googleplex and it’s impossible to track that information.” Read the rest of this entry »