Google Chrome browser

[Perd Hapley]

I hate that "functionality."  I use an add-on in Firefox just to get rid of it. 

[Balog]

I hate that "functionality."  I use an add-on in Firefox just to get rid of it. 

?!?!?!

I do easily %95 percent of my browsing that way, as I tend to goto the same dozen or so sites. Do you type every address you want to goto into the bar?

[mtnbkr]

Do you type every address you want to goto into the bar?

Just about.  My bookmarks are mainly those that I rarely go to or new stuff that I haven't committed to memory.

Chris

[Perd Hapley]

Do you type every address you want to goto into the bar?

?!?!?!  I use speed dial and bookmarks.

[xavier fremboe]

Chrome is very intuitive, IMHO.  It remembers the sites I visit in alphabetical order, and all I have to do is type the first few letters and then hit return.  Logging onto aps involves hitting 'ar' and return.  

Yes, it is stripped down, but that allows more of the space to be used with actual browsing.  I'm currently at the house one the kids laptop, but there is about an inch worth of Yahoo "tools".  The only one I don't miss is the GPR meter...

It's also faster than any other browser I've used on any OS, including ff on Ubuntu, which smoked ff on xp  (I think I was on hoary hedgehog).  Much faster than Safari, FF (even the latest), or ie.  

Besides security issues, I'd recommend it to friends, family and employees.

[Vodka7]

Are you implying that the developers are paid?

Yes.  It's true.  The Mozilla Foundation owns the Mozilla Corporation, which employees dozens of developers.  Even before they founded the corporation (which was years ago), the foundation was using the money to promote the platform, which in turn attracted talented volunteers.

The biggest, most successful open source projects generally have a corporation dumping money into them--Google with Firefox (although the link is less direct than it usually is), Sun with OpenOffice, and Canonnical with Ubuntu.

[Perd Hapley]

I have oft wondered how freeware/opensource co-exists with TANSTAAFL.  Why do the suits "give away" all that money and software? 

[Vodka7]

I have oft wondered how freeware/opensource co-exists with TANSTAAFL.  Why do the suits "give away" all that money and software? 

Well, when you really get down to it, Google's an advertising company.  A lot of the stuff they offer has big development and maintenance costs and brings in zero revenue.  I use Google search, Gmail, Google sync, and Google reader every single day.  I use Google maps maybe once or twice a week.  And I've never paid Google a single dime for any of it.

But, Google's strategy is to keep my eyes on Google products for as much of the time as possible, so they can sell adspace.  They're basically the superbowl of online advertising--millions of eyes, all in the same space.

Giving away Chrome (and eventually their operating system, Chrome OS) is a way to get even more viewers.  Google's probably the only company big enough where they stand a chance of forcing Dell to pre-load their software as a viable option to Microsoft.  And by viable I mean at least $200 cheaper, right there on the front page, a Google machine right next to a Microsoft machine.  And once they've done that, all those PCs that ship defaulting to MSN.com or Bing.com now default to Google.com.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

A lot of it is also strategic.  Google aims to be ubiquitous in the internet world in the same way Microsoft is ubiquitous in desktop PC software.  Producing superior web tools and giving them away free advances that strategy.  It also undermines their competitors (primarily Microsoft) by denying them sales and market share.

In terms of Chrome, I think Google believes they can't be the premiere web company if most internet users are using Internet Explorer.

[Perd Hapley]

I read an article in a dead-tree computer magazine this weekend.  The author said Google had not the faintest hope of unseating Windows.  They're real goal, he said, was to have the OS makers move more of their applications to being web-based.  Or something like that.

[mtnbkr]

I read an article in a dead-tree computer magazine this weekend.  The author said Google had not the faintest hope of unseating Windows.  They're real goal, he said, was to have the OS makers move more of their applications to being web-based.  Or something like that.

Not that crap again.  They've been trying to do that since the web appeared on corporate radar.  Prior to that, it was running apps from a central server.  Everyone wants to take the PC backwards to a dumb terminal.

Chris

[Gewehr98]

I can see it happening.

My wife works for a business that sets up and manages data storage centers nationwide.

Their big focus right now is to gear up for Cloud Computing.

It reminds me of SETI gone large - if your data center doesn't have enough number crunching horsepower to get a given task done, just farm it out to other CPUs in the Cloud that can spare processor cycles.  Fine as long as that T1 or T3 is unbroken, and supposedly it'll reduce the amount of IT personnel required for a given business. 

It's a lot like the old IBM Mainframes I wrote JCL for in the 1980s, except we're now using WAN bandwidth with smart terminals or thin clients, etc. as the user interface. 

Google's ambitions line up perfectly with that mindset.  Take the applications off the user's local machine, and have it all done on a Google or Google-contracted cloud farm, zinging the info back to the user just as quickly as if it had run in the desktop or notebook at home.