Answers to common Google Chrome objections

I spend a fair amount of my time debunking misconceptions about Google. So when I found out that Google Chrome was going to be released, I put on my thinking cap about what objections people would throw out about Google Chrome. Here are the questions that I came up with, along with my personal answers. I want to stress that this is my personal blog, so even though I believe all of this is accurate, these are not official answers.

Q: This browser is going to have AdSense hard-coded into a browser frame that I can’t delete, right?
A: No, there’s no ads built into Google Chrome at all.

Q: Hmm. Well, I bet you hard-code Google as the default search engine, don’t you? I’ll bet you can’t even select other search engines!
A: Prepare to be pleasantly surprised. By default, Google Chrome imports your default search engine from your default browser. When you first install Google Chrome, you get a dialog box listing the default search engine with buttons to keep or change the default search engine. In addition, you can change the default search engine at any point. There’s a couple easy ways to do it. For example, you can right-click on the Omnibox/address bar and select “Edit search engines…”:

Edit search engines

Then you can select from any of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live, or Ask), or add a new search engine url:

Other search engines

Another way to change your default search service is to click the Chrome menu (it looks like a wrench), select “Options” and then in the “Basics” tab make your choice for the “Default search:” option.

But wait! It gets even easier to search on other engines. In the Omnibox/address bar, you can start typing “live.com” or “yahoo.com” until the Omnibox offers live.com or yahoo.com as an autocomplete option–for me, I only have to type the characters ‘l’ or ‘y’ to bring up these suggestions. Once you see “live.com” show up as an autocomplete option, just hit the Tab key and you will be offered to search for a query on live.com. So I can search on live.com just by typing the letter ‘l’, then pressing the Tab key, then entering my query. So it takes just 2-3 keystrokes to run your search on any search engine! Why not always two keystrokes? Well, should the letter ‘a’ bring up ask.com or amazon.com? Sometimes you have to type a few keystrokes to tell Google Chrome where you want to search.

Just in case you’re curious, the auto-search-discovery is triggered by search fields on the root page of the domain. I don’t have a search field on the root page of my domain (www.mattcutts.com), so if I go to www.mattcutts.com/blog/ and do a search there, Google Chrome won’t learn the autocomplete-with-the-Tab key trick. Instead, I would need a search box on www.mattcutts.com for the Tab key to learn to search (it’s also good to use standard POST HTML submits instead of anything too fancy like JavaScript). If that sounds too hard, there’s an easy solution for you: Google Chrome supports OpenSearch discovery too.

Lots of people would expect Google Chrome to hard-code searches to Google. I’m glad that Google Chrome
– tries to do something reasonable on installation based on your default search engine
– makes it easy to change the search service to any major search engine
– makes it trivial to run a query on different search engines with just a couple keystrokes, without lifting your hands off the keyboard, and without even changing your default search service.

And the criteria are clear and easy for a site to use this Tab-to-search ability in Google Chrome. Danny Sullivan has also written about how Google Chrome’s search service doesn’t bias toward Google.

Q: Okay, but this browser is tracking everywhere I go and sending that information to Google. Go on, deny my conspiracy theory!
A: Not only do I deny it, but in this post I broke down every piece of communication that I know of between Google and Google Chrome. The browser is also completely open-source, so by all means please verify for yourself or modify the browser however you want if you don’t like what Google Chrome does.

Q: Another browser? Geez, I’m a webmaster/search engine optimizer/front-end programmer and I don’t want to worry about another browser.
A: Google did not add another rendering engine. Google Chrome uses WebKit for rendering, which is the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari browser, so if your site is compatible with Safari it should work great in Chrome. Personally, I do think creating clean code that validates and works on many different browsers will be an important skill for webmasters and web designers. These days a smart site owner thinks about how their web site looks to all browsers, from Internet Explorer to Safari to Opera to an iPhone.

Q: Clearly launching a web browser means that Google is losing its focus on core search quality, right?
A: As a member of Google’s search quality group, I can utterly and forcefully debunk that idea. 🙂 Google has more engineers working on core search quality and in-depth search research than ever before, and Google’s search quality group remains just as focused as we ever have been. (By the way, our search quality group has been opening up with more blog posts on the official Google blog recently.)

Q: Does this mean that you don’t love/support Firefox or the Mozilla Foundation?
A: This is a personal answer, because I don’t know Google’s official messaging. I *love* Firefox. I write about it all the time; heck, I wore a Firefox tattoo for a day earlier this year. Firefox was one of the first browsers to offer tabbed browsing, and Firefox’s extensions and flexible preferences let you do amazing things. But competition is good for everyone, because it will push web browsers ahead even faster. Google Chrome advances the state-of-the-art in web browsers in several new ways (read the comic book to see why). And since everything in Google Chrome is completely open-source, if we come up with a good technology such as V8, which is a blazing-fast, from-the-ground-up implementation of a JavaScript virtual machine, Firefox or anyone else is welcome to yoink it and use it themselves. It may be that innovations from Google Chrome are quickly folded into other browsers. If so, that’s great! That means that people will enjoy a faster, safer, more stable experience on the web.

For a more eloquent take on this issue, read the blog post that John Lilly, the Mozilla Corporation CEO did. While mentioning that Mozilla and Google are different organizations with different missions, Lilly also reiterated some of the ways that Mozilla and Google have worked together:

I think both organizations [Mozilla and Google] have done much over the last few years to improve and open the Web, and we’ve had very good collaborations that include the technical, product, and financial. On the technical side of things, we’ve collaborated most recently on Breakpad, the system we use for crash reports — stuff like that will continue. On the product front, we’ve worked with them to implement best-in-class anti-phishing and anti-malware that we’ve built into Firefox, and looks like they’re building into Chrome. On the financial front, as has been reported lately, we’ve just renewed our economic arrangement with them through November 2011, which means a lot for our ability to continue to invest in Firefox and in new things like mobile and services.

Q: But I can’t install extension X! Google Chrome is dead to me if I can’t use extension X!
A: Then you’ll have to use another browser for a while. Google Chrome currently doesn’t support browser extensions (it does support plug-ins, such as Flash). I’m sure that extensions/add-ons are something that the Chrome team would like to do down the road, but the Chrome team will be a bit busy for a while, what with the feedback from the launch plus working on Mac and Linux support. I’d suggest that you give Google Chrome a try for a few days to see if enjoy browsing even without extension X. A lot of really cool extension-like behaviors such as resize-able textareas and drag-and-drop file upload are already built into Google Chrome.

Q: Speaking of Macs and Linux, why no Mac/Linux support yet?
A: Again, this is just my personal take. I work on search quality and have no particular insight into this question. But personally, I think supporting Windows first is the right decision. My house has more Macs than Windows machines, but I am not a typical user. Windows machines are still the majority of the market, so it makes sense to start there. And I think it makes sense to launch the Windows version now so that the project starts getting the feedback that will make the Windows, Mac, and Linux versions of Google Chrome better.

Q: This is going to be some buggy, crashing piece of beta download, isn’t it?
A: No, I don’t really think so. Google determined one million pages that users are likely to surf to. Then a piece of software known as “ChromeBot” ran a torture test by loading those one million pages that we crawled for every new build of Google Chrome. This is a smart testing methodology because this real-world torture test quickly highlighted which bugs were most important to fix and helped determine priorities for the most important bugs. So Google Chrome has already been automatically “fuzz tested” on tons of web pages. Google Chrome is very robust against anything the web can throw at it. If I had to guess where the browser might crash, it would be because we haven’t seen Google Chrome run across all the weird, wild hardware that runs Windows. But I’ve been using Google Chrome for months with essentially no crashes; it’s been rock-solid for me.

Q: Google has some selfish motivation for doing this, right? I’m sure that there’s some angle here–there’s gotta be?
A: Here’s my personal take. If people like and use the web more, that’s eventually good for Google because they will do more searches. Therefore it’s in Google’s interests to make the web better, more accessible and more useful. And Google Chrome does that by making the web faster, safer, and more stable.

Q: Will Google stop actively working on Google Chrome and let it stagnate after a few months?
A: Again, just my personal take: I doubt it. Google Chrome feels at least as important to me as Gmail. And in all my interactions with the Chrome team, it’s clear that this project has been a huge labor of love. It’s been a labor of blood, sweat and tears as well 🙂 but mostly love. I have a huge amount of respect for the Chrome team, because they’ve accomplished something amazing and created a product that anyone would be proud of.

Update, Sept. 3rd 2008: Forgot one:
Q: Dude, this anonymous commenter said that Google claims that they own everything you touch when you run Chrome! Should I be worried?
A: No, of course not. I debunked that misconception last night in a Mashable comment and this morning in a ReadWriteWeb comment. Google does not want to claim the rights to everything you surf or do in Chrome, just like we didn’t want it the time before with Google Docs. 🙂 I’m sure that other Googlers will clarify that point more officially. It is good that people pore through the license and ask these questions though, because if something looks worrisome then we can use that opportunity to make it more clear.

If this post helped you feel better about Google Chrome, you can download it at http://www.google.com/chrome and try it out.

146 Responses to Answers to common Google Chrome objections (Leave a comment)

  1. Chrome uses webkit, but still displays pages differently than Safari 🙁

  2. Kenny Hyder, we want to make Chrome behave well on normal web pages, but if you want to highlight any pages with bad rendering behavior, I’m sure that the Chrome team will see it.

  3. You forgot to mention the inability to install if you have Symantec on your computer.

    http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=38&colspec=ID%20Pri%20Area%20Mstone%20Type%20Owner%20Status%20Summary%20Modified#makechanges

    That’s the biggest question of the day and a personal frustration of mine on my work laptop. I did a remote connection to my personal server to see how Chrome looks and acts but can’t do it locally.

    😉

    Love ya man but that’s something that needs some serious addressing by either Google, Symantec or both.

  4. 1) Chrome does not display some things the same as safari 3.1. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/kurafire/2822606444/ as an example.

    2) “Personally, I do think creating clean code that validates and works on many different browsers will be an important skill for webmasters and web designers.” No. Just no. I should be able to create clean validating code and be able to rely on the browser rendering it correctly and completely without having to hack in a bunch of workarounds. Chrome intrigues me, but now I have to figure out if it really implements all of, say, CSS2 or left out some things.The use of Webkit is a great start, but it’s not guarantee. I long for the day when I can say “My validating page will display fine in all browsers because they all implement standards fully.” Mind you I don’t anticipate seeing that day for a long while….

    3) Mac and Linux. What concerns me here isn’t that Windows is first, it’s that Mac and Linux weren’t at the same time. One thing Mozilla gets right with Firefox is that the builds are simultaneous – a release is a release on all platforms. Once the Mac and Linux versions of Chrome are out, subsequent releases should happen at the same time.

  5. “it’s also good to use standard POST submits ”

    Whoa! Never use POST for search queries, that’s very bad!

  6. Brent D. Payne, it can be hard to convince a vendor to take you seriously when they don’t know why you’re reporting a particular issue or bug. I expect now that Google Chrome is out in public, a lot of people will understand that they need to work with Google to solve these sorts of issues. Fair feedback, though.

  7. “Whoa! Never use POST for search queries, that’s very bad!”

    Doh–did I mention that I wrote most of this around midnight last night? 🙂 Tweaked it to be more correct.

  8. “But personally, I think supporting Windows first is the right decision.”

    However, given the history of WebKit, releasing Chrome for Windows only—at this time—seems a bit…, well, rude.

  9. Why’s there no integration with Google Bookmarks?

    I could live without Firebug and the delicious addons but when my bookmarks are in “the cloud” I need an easy way to access them and keep them up-to-date….

  10. Matt, I noticed in my web stats that Chrome displays as Safari in my browser platform results. I understand using the WebKit it will do this, but will this be something that they will change so I can more accurately track browsers used when viewing my blog, or is this up to the stats program?

  11. Those are all webmaster and developper related objections you came up with. Not surprisingly of course as that’s the world you live in.

    But what would be “normal” user objections you think?

  12. oh now I remember why I like the Google toolbar most. The highlight function. Please Matt, get the toolbar done for Chrome as well!!!!

  13. Hey Andy,

    You can use bookmarklets in Chrome to save any web page to Chrome, which is what I’ve been doing. In a nutshell, hit CTRL-B to bring up the bookmarks bar in Chrome, and if you’d like more details, check out my blog post here :-).

  14. Q: This is going to be some buggy, crashing piece of beta download, isn’t it?
    A: No, I don’t really think so. Google determined one million pages that users are likely to surf to. Then a piece of software known as “ChromeBot” ran a torture test by loading those one million pages that we crawled for every new build of Google Chrome.

    Sorry Matt…I agree with you on most things, but I can’t agree with you on this. After the fourth time seeing “Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed! Restart now?” after exactly three minutes of doing nothing but trying to find something as simple as a menu bar, I uninstalled it. (And no, it wasn’t something you said…although that cutesy-poo prompt didn’t help with the first impression).

    I thought IE buggered up the user interface with IE7…they’ve got nothing on Chrome.

  15. I loaded Chrome on my HP notebook running Vista SP1, and Chrome failed on every Web site I tried, including Engaget, GMail, and Google Docs.

    Typically, the site appears for a few seconds before the unhappy Mac icon appears, telling me to try again.

  16. Matt: Thanks for answering my question from this post.

    Makes sense and you’ve actually given me a little bit of inspiration for a new blog post. Thanks!

  17. Add-ons are the whole reason I use Firefox! I’m keen to give Chrome a try, but without my add-ons I feel like I’ve got my hand tied behind my back!

  18. Hi Matt, I tried this trick you mention in this post :

    But wait! It gets even easier to search on other engines. In the Omnibox/address bar, you can start typing “live.com” or “yahoo.com” until the Omnibox offers live.com or yahoo.com as an autocomplete option–for me, I only have to type the characters ‘l’ or ‘y’ to bring up these suggestions. Once you see “live.com” show up as an autocomplete option, just hit the Tab key

    But well, when I hit the Tab key… the text focus just go on the next field in the web page… nothing happens telling me to search with the other search engine.. Am I doing something wrong ?

  19. @Philippe,

    You first need to visit live.com or yahoo.com and let the home page of the site load. From that point on, you should be able to start typing the name of the search engine in the address bar and (assuming that it is showing as the first entry in the auto-complete) you can hit tab, and it will prompt you to perform search using that search engine.

  20. I’ve been very impressed with Chrome’s rendering speed. I did noticed that I was unable to right click on the left margin in my Google Docs spreadsheet. I couldn’t right click to insert a row.

  21. Didn’t add another rendering engine, but did build a new JavaScript virtual machine, and that does mean we have yet another browser to test against.

    So, what’s Google’s commitment to ECMAScript?

  22. I got home a short time ago, and after explaining the difference between a browser and a search engine to my wife (as she downloaded Chrome onto her PC), and then after waiting for Vista to let me install Chrome on my PC, everything works well and it’s much faster now (although Vista is still a bit slow…).

    I will test drive it some more and let you know. Thanks for the quick updates!

    Also, I understand the need to get to market quickly, but the Google Toolbar would be at the top of my list of needed enhancements.

    Brian M

  23. Hi Matt, I see you haven’t thought of the question, “By Using GChrome, are you giving advertisers extra ammo” or to put it another way, “how much of your data will Google share with advertisers while you browse with GChrome?”

  24. You mention browser extensions and plugins above. I see that plugins are currently supported… could I use the WebKit/Chromium plugin API to create something like Greasemonkey? A Greasemonkey on V8 would open up some exciting possibilities… but can a Chrome plugin manipulate the DOM at this point?

  25. Hi Matt,

    Could you please convince google to release an open source version of linux as well, then I’ll have a complete google platform 🙂

    Regards

  26. Matt, I’m finding that Google Chrome is NOT so forgiving as IE on pages with coding errors etc.

    IMO, 99.9% web sufers don’t give a rats arse about proper or strict coding, only that can can see/read what they have found.

  27. Matt; you know damn well I’d tell you and Google if there was something just not right, right? 🙂

    I don’t know what it is, but I’m not seeing any of the bugs and things others in here are seeing. In fact; I’ve been trying very hard to find something wrong at all. Yeah, that’s right; I can’t find anything at all. My goodness; it’s damn quick. It uses a whole lot less puter resources. EVERY page I have tried loading, loads up perfectly and VERY fast, and no display problems whatsoever.

    I’ll be sure to let you know if/when I find anything though. 😀

  28. Surely surfing the Web is only ever going to as fast as the slowest bottle neck in the long line of processes?

    I may be wrong, but I wouldn’t think changing Browsers is going to speed things up for most as the bottle neck in the long line of processes is rarely the Browser.

    Still, let’s not underestimate the Placebo effect as it is a BIG factor in almost anything.

  29. My perennial complaint about Google is that they treat Linux and Mac users like second-class citizens. (Let me count the apps…)

    You say they made the right decision to ship on Windows first. Maybe so, maybe not — depends on what the purpose of the launch is. I’m not going to argue that.

    But I will note that in this case, and every other Google app I can think of, Google doesn’t even have an ETA or schedule for supporting Mac and Linux. Is this part of a more general trend? That is, all software development that I’ve done has been “build a prototype, pick a ship date, make sacrifices (features, personal time, whatever) to meet it, ship program”. The Google way, which seems to be highly praised, is “release something with a big BETA stamp that does the bare minimum, iterate endlessly with no schedule”. (GMail has been “BETA” for 4.5 years.) Is this the future of software? Do Google programmers not find deadlines useful?

    As a user, I would much, much prefer to hear something like “the Linux and Mac versions will ship in 6 months”, and then either cut features to hit that, or be pleasantly surprised by beating it. I’m a bit disappointed that one of the most successful software companies of the decade seems to lack any scheduling discipline, which the rest of the industry strives for. Does Google recognize that users hate this, or do they not see a problem?

  30. Doug, calm down on the profanaties 😉

  31. Hey Matt,
    I have been trying Chrome today. It is awesome, and fast! But, I have to tell you the deal breaker.. it is not so much the no add-ons, but the fact that i cannot import all my usernames and passwords from FireFox. It gets everything else.. but not the passwords.. which is a killer.. I dont even remember half of them!

  32. Well, i have to say, im a web developer and a software engineer, and i downloaded Chrome and i have to say, WOW, its really a feat of engineering, the interface is so clean, please make sure it stays that way.

    The only site i found which didnt quite render properly was the Australian Commonwealth Bank site, http://www.commbank.com.au, which obviously wouldnt have been tested because its a secure login site, but every site works beautifully.

    On top of that, it loads fast and is just simply a breeze to use. I will be recommending it to people.

    Being such a small download also has its pluses, and the incognito mode is awesome…

    Personally i say to Google, go for it, make the best browser ever, so that everyone uses it and it becomes the standard, once this happens the development issues of site compatibility with browsers will be abolished because there will only be one browser…

    I will support this browser even more than I suppported FireFox.

  33. rick, I think that Chrome does very well at the Acid3 test, and the team definitely wants to be as compatible as possible.

    “However, given the history of WebKit, releasing Chrome for Windows only—at this time—seems a bit…, well, rude.”

    Tobias, you’ve got to start somewhere. It wouldn’t do much good to launch for Macs before it’s ready.

    “Why’s there no integration with Google Bookmarks?”

    Andy Davies, to be fair if we launched with Google Bookmarks, people would have complained about that too. But I agree that it would be really nice to let me store my bookmarks in the cloud somehow. Right now my Chrome bookmarks are local to each machine, which makes me a little sad.

    Jules, you can distinguish between Chrome because it will have “Chrome” in the user agent. It’s toward the end though.

    M.W.A., I think that we’ve done a good job of testing Chrome on lots of different web pages. My best guess is that Chrome is getting tested out on lots of new/different hardware that Google couldn’t test with at first. And if I continued my best guess, I’d expect that we’d be able to knock out many of those bugs pretty quickly.

  34. “But well, when I hit the Tab key… the text focus just go on the next field in the web page.”

    Philippe Meunier, your focus should be in the address bar.

    Shelley, I know that we want to standard so that we reduce the amount of work that people have to do.

    “how much of your data will Google share with advertisers while you browse with GChrome?”

    Zax Stevens, I already covered this in the other blog post–Google doesn’t get surfing data as you click around the web in Chrome.

    casey, good question but I don’t know the answer to that.

    gjs, I’ll pass the feedback on.

    Doug Heil, it is damn quick. My hope is that the Chrome team will knock out some of the other issues that people are seeing on their different hardware pretty quickly too.

  35. Dave (Original) – it´s fast, I load the same site (my own) repeatedly and I know it like the back of my hand. Chrome loaded it much faster first time and subsequent times… Loaded gmail faster. Loaded my CMS faster. Still no add-ons and what about search keywords – this tab thing doesn´t work for me!

    And youŕe right, no-one cares what standard websites use, as long as they work – thatś the point of standards – to make sites work on every platform. Thatś why I like standards because it means my site is likely to be readable for my visitors.

    Good for IE that it hides errors, it has cornered the market for mediocrity. Maybe if web-designers weren´t lulled into a false sense of security by IE, we wouldn´t be in the current position with the browser compatibility headache!

  36. Matt, surely surfing the Web is only ever going to as fast as the slowest bottle neck in the long line of processes?

    I may be wrong, but I wouldn’t think changing Browsers is going to speed things up for most as the bottle neck in the long line of processes is rarely the Browser.

  37. I’ve read there’s a chrome-ID, basically tagging every chrome download, that is sent with every request to google. Can’t check it now because I don’t have windows, but you you address that? Link is http://www.lawblog.de/index.php/archives/2008/09/03/chrome-nr-und-google-id/, but that’s a german blog.

  38. i really like google chrome, but… why it don´t display the pagerank?

  39. Why is Chrome stealthily running under a complicated user agent so it is hard to identify in Google Analytics?

  40. Matt, (or anyone else for that matter);

    Can you please tell me how to stop Google from redirecting to google.com.ph everytime I search using the Omnibox by using the “edit search engine” feature?

  41. Open source, open source, open source, open source where are the open source in Google?

    Google is a traitor 😉

  42. The new Google browser is very nice, easy to use and very fast. However, it does not support Lively (its own virtual world s/w) how sad.

  43. I am mightily impressed thus far. Why does the setup only take bookmarks from Internet Explorer and not Firefox? (I have both). I assume it took all my IE plug-ins with it which was a nice surprise. However, I can’t find a way of uninstalling one (I want to see how it instals it so I can give support).

    Thanks

  44. very good browser but where are menus ?

  45. Everywhere it says open source, so I keep looking, but I’m sure not finding it. I even tried http://code.google.com/p/chrome/ on a hunch, and it tells me I’m forbidden–not that it doesn’t exist. So, you should probably stop calling it open source, or give some way to grab a copy of the source.

  46. On Google Chrome…wow. I just installed windows vista through bootcamp on my mac. It was worth it. I don’t just think its the psychic omnibar, the browser is so fast it seems psychic itself. I am sure there will be problems, ALL new software has them. I personally think that using webkit was a great idea. And rick, that day is very very far away, so being able to make sure your work is multiple browser compliant is a very good skill to have. PS, the find box (ctrl+f) is awesome! Better than Safari.

  47. I did not like it. I like seeing my stumbled upon, digg, and newsvine toolbar, and could not get Chrome to replicate the way it is on firefox.

  48. When is Google Analytics going to be able to recognize Chrome?

  49. @Matt W.
    “chrome-ID” or “Serienummer” in the German pages. It seems they are speculating about the possibility of connecting the download and install action and correlating with the then started Chrome browser. I’m sure it’s possible, and I’m even more sure Google isn’t doing it.

    So, I haven’t seen any download serial nr, but I guess that can only be verified by sniffing all your network traffic while installing Google Chrome. After first run, I’d claim there are no unique identifiers that connect your surf behaviour to your browser installation.

  50. I like it; it’s fast and seems to give me a lot more of the screen (what’s the point of a 24″ monitor if you don’t get all the real estate). I’ll set it as default for a while, and see how it works. I can’t live without firebug though, so it’ll still come second to Firefox for the time being.

    You know, as long as Google is working on the browsing experience, they oughta also work out a way to fix the whole Google Account mess with Chrome. I have multiple Google Accounts, for me personally, for my business, for my clients. My iGoogle is highly optimized on my personal account, but that’s not the account I use for AdWords, AdSense or Analytics, let alone half a dozen GMail accounts, so I have to keep one account running in IE while logged in to the other one in Firefox. But sometimes I have to use the other browser for some reason, and what a pain it is.

  51. Matt: I can’t really interpret your answer. Are you asking for my hardware specs in this case?

    This did also lead to a tangental question: did you test it on XP64? If not, that might actually explain the ongoing crashes that I saw.

  52. What about this Matt ?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/google_chrome_eula_sucks/

    Looks a bit funny to me, hopefully you or your colleagues can clarify this.

  53. Where’s the 256bit SSL encryption support? The best I can get out of Chrome is 128bit.

  54. As a dyed in the wool Firefox fan I have to say I didn’t expect to be as impressed by Chrome as I am; and bearing in mind it’s in beta it’s doubly impressive.

  55. Matt,

    How does Chrome identify it self in traffic statistics? I’m sure I visited my own site yesterday with Chrome, but it’s not showing in Analytics.

  56. I just read in a dutch newspaper (online) that Chrome is not protected to the Carpet Bomb,… because the Safari base that was used, was from before Safari was updated.

    How does Chrome get updated Matt?

  57. Matt,

    Chrome and Ozzie have something in common; both move in the speed of light!!

    And my objection is; Google Chrome should have been called ” Google Ozzie” instead 🙂

  58. Hi Mat!
    Great blogging, as usual. I just wanted to say that I tried to install Google Toolbar, using Google Chrome, because I didn’t realize I could just use the address bar for search.

    Anyway, the download site for Google Toolbar asked me to download FF2.0. You should tell someone about that and have them changing that to some message instead about how easy it is to search you favourite search-engine with Chrome. 🙂

    Best
    Kris

  59. I have to say I am really impressed with Chrome, even though I don’t have a windows machine I had to try it out on my girlfriend’s box (can’t wait for the Linux version). My girlfriend however is blind and can’t use this browser at all. This is really disappointing I expected far more from Google on this – There is a very good post detailing a lot of the Accessibility issues at http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/?p=92 – I hope someone on the Chrome team reads this, because as you say it is in Google’s interest to make the web accessible to all.

  60. Why doesn’t Chrome include the Google toolbar? I need the PageRank indicator!

  61. ah; I found a site that has pages that cannot be shown through Chrome.

    http://www.hoopsworld.com/

    Click on the story links on the left side. 🙂

    It took me awhile to find stuff that didn’t work in Chrome though. I’ve browsed many a site I view all the time to just now find one.

  62. Dread Pirate Robert

    I guess I’m dealing with the Symantec issue, because despite my eagerness to try Chrome (at work, on a brand new machine), I keep getting the “Aw, Snap” and “The application failed to initialize properly” application errors.

    Patiently waiting for Chrome SP1…

  63. Hey Matt,

    After years of being pushed, I finally made the switch from IE to Firefox. Not really keen on making another browser switch. Do you know if Roboform Supports Chrome? Probably not yet – I suppose I can check that myself.

    I like much of what I am reading, but for me to make the switch, I really need a few hard points that say, “Here are 10 reasons why you should switch from FireFox to Chrome”. Perhaps a great future blog post for you to write?

  64. So the link to my email address, The National Library of Medicine, which is 508 compliant, does not load in Chrome.

    Safari works fine as do all major browsers backwards compatible 2 versions. So there must be some rendering differences between Safari and Chrome.

    Good luck Google on the new browser!

  65. The EULA with Chrome is totally unacceptable. While it doesn’t claim ownership of property it does say Google can reuse anything you post through Chrome anyway they want. Google seems to have a serious IP problem.

  66. Its wonderful, but there should be a way to install Chrome for all the users in a single go. I have a couple of users and for each one, i had to install one by one. I had to literally wait everytime while the installer was downloading setup from the google server.

  67. “Google does not want to claim the rights to everything you surf or do in Chrome”

    Glad to hear it, when will the EULA be changed to reflect this because as it stands Google are claiming some IP rights over content I create if using Chrome?

  68. Hi Matt,

    I can’t use Chrome at work because of the very personal info that appears in the new tabs. Even though the websites are visited before I start work, during lunch and after I clock out… There they are for all to see whenever I open a new tab. (Shock – Horror)

    It would create an embarrassing situation if ALL of the most visited sites were not work related.

    Even worse… Most of my most frequently visited websites revolve around politics and religion. I have extreme views on both subjects and I try my best to keep that sort of thing private while at work.

    I know that I can open a new “incognito” window but that’s an extra step, all the cookies get erased and it’s a real pain to log into everything, every time, etc… Overall… The Incognito window is a real pain and seriously slows me down.

    It would be my very strong preference to disable the personal info presented on the new tabs. The personal info display makes Chrome more of hazardous than anything.

    The amount of personal information that Chrome displays at-a-glance is simply too dangerous.

    I’ll happily use Chrome at home but… I do about 70% of my web browsing at the office, 20% on the iPhone & 10% at home.

    Thanks!

  69. As djlosch put it:

    If Google doesn’t want to own everything is create/submit through Chrome, why is this in the EULA?

    “By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

    Take that out, and I’ll give Chrome a shot.

  70. Interesting post. Also interesting comments, particularly about the EULA, the potential security issues with version of WebKit being used and the lack of visibility of the source code for this “open source” project.

    I installed and tested Chrome yesterday and found it to be at least as quick as Firefox in rendering most pages. It imported all my Firefox config properly as far as I could tell. I didn’t find any major problems with browsing, although I found a few things on Facebook didn’t work (e.g. deleting a wall post) – maybe a problem with the new JS engine?

    For me it’s not going to be my browser of choice atm as I do use a lot of extensions in Firefox which I would really miss (such as StumbleUpon et al.) but for most end-users I think it would be a good option.

    I was going to leave Chrome installed and try it from time-to-time, then I noticed the Google Updater service was present with no obvious way to uninstall it. So I uninstalled Chrome, and it still left Google Updater behind. The instructions to remove Google Updater posted on Google’s website don’t work (it seems to be a different beast to that which ships with the Google Pack).

    In the end I resorted to registry editor to get rid of the thing properly. I really hate it when software companies install all this extra unnecessary crud without asking and then don’t give you a way to uninstall. I hope the team sort this out before GA. You do NOT need an insidious background updater service for an application that you’re going to use on a daily basis – just check for updates at application startup and periodically while the application is running (and give the user the option to opt out). It’s good enough for Firefox, after all?

  71. There are some speculations on swedish blogs etc about §11.1 in the EULA, regarding Google’s right to use uploaded content ” … you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services… “. Are you in a position to comment on that?

  72. Hi Matt,

    Thanks for the updates. I have a question. The EULA seems to allow Google access to my own intellectual property. Can you address this post?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/google_chrome_eula_sucks

    Thanks!

  73. Matt, thanks for responding about that 11.1 clause I posted about (also the poster above). I don’t remember doing it anonymously though?

    Fwiw, the forums I frequent are just full of questions about this particular clause, as seem to be many others. It might be worth having a lawyer guy doublecheck it to see if it has to written in quite that manner. I could see the media getting hold of this and making a big deal out of it if there’s any ambiguity.

  74. Matt,

    yes Chrome does OK displaying that CSS… but it’s NOT the same as Safari. My point was that simply because both use Webkit does not mean theat both browsers will render things identically. For better or worse, we now have another browser to test against and the community needs to hold Google to the same standards compliance benchmark as we do other browser vendors. The use of Webkit will probably make this more or less a non-issue, but it’s not a zero effort given.

    on the EULA – you debunked nothing. Your assurances do not matter. I don’t mean this as a personal attack, but “matt cutts said….” would not work in court.

    That section of the EULA certainly seems to claim that Google is given a license to any content I publish using Chrome. Those terms made sense for Apps since I may share content there. But Chrome is not Apps and the EULA should deal with the rights and responsibilities of each party as they pertain to Chrome. I’ll agree to the Apps EULA if and when I use that service – don’t tie the two together. Note that there’s no such licensing provision when I use Firefox.

    If you need certain rights for Omnibar to work etc, fine. Put those in the EULA. But this looks like some associate over in Legal did a quick cut and paste.

  75. Stop trying to dismiss the issue by disguising it and doing some handwaving. Yes, it’s true that the EULA states that the person retains the copyright to any data submitted via Chrome. However, the problem is the next line, that Google can use and modify that data as the company sees fit and even share it with other businesses, so long as it is in conjunction with the “Service”, and not pay for it.

    Seriously, I am glad I found out that both Google Docs and Picassa have this same license, it’s a shady tactic, claiming the right to use copyrighted material an not pay for it.

  76. “By default, Google Chrome imports your default search engine from your default browser”

    The computer I installed on had IE7 as default browser and “Live Search” as default search engine, but Chrome still installed with Google as default search. Did I misunderstand what you meant?

  77. In response to this question:

    Q: Okay, but this browser is tracking everywhere I go and sending that information to Google. Go on, deny my conspiracy theory!

    I believe that Chrome is sharing ALL activiity of the browser with google via posts to:
    https://toolbarqueries.google.com/firefox/metrics/collect

    This is in metrics_service.cc

    http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/chrome/browser/metrics_service.cc

  78. I will not even download Google Chrome while there is any terminology in the EULA which is as outrageous as this. Firefox does not have this ridiculous language, and I’m not surprised to see the netizen legal field up in arms about this.

    Way to blow your reputation, Google. I’m not going to be labeled a conspiracist by this blogger jackinape either. My rights are my rights, and if Matt doesn’t respect that, he can cease to exist for all I care. I do not appreciate his myopic and denigratory tone with people who have serious questions.

    Great job at being an elitist shill for the machine, bad job at being an intelligent person Matt.

    I’ve lost all respect for this ‘creature’ Matt and will no longer refer to it as a human until it adapts more human behavior.

    And, the EULA is no conspiracy, it’s real, and there is no way in hades I’ll agree to that.

    Google Chrome = FAIL.

    ~D

  79. I loaded it up, saw that there were tabs, searched for a way to turn the tabs off, and couldn’t find a way to do it. I closed Chrome and haven’t opened it back since. I hate tabs and they’re a major deal-breaker for me. Hopefully I just missed the option somewhere.

  80. I love Google Chrome… simple, fast, dynamically tabbed and clean. My one problem is this… there are limited customization features. The one I’m most concerned with is the auto-suggest feature that lists recently viewed and web based suggestions and places them under the search bar as your typing. I don’t like this and would like to turn it off completely but when I turn off the auto-complete feature in the options section… it has no affect. I still get the list under my search bar and it’s very irritating. Kudos to the Google team for their innovative design, now how do I turn that auto-suggest feature off ?

  81. Thanks for your comments, Matt! After reading some of the posts around the Net, I was pretty convinced that the offensive EULA wording was just a beta cut-and-paste glitch, and would be changed to something bearable. But your pat denial has convinced me it’s entirely deliberate, and NOT going away. Thanks for clearing that up!

    The link you’ve included regarding the previous Google Docs controversy was particularly great — a blog entry showing that this issue already came up a year ago, and was apparently never addressed, other than via similar blanket denials. Cool! And thanks for the overall implication that it is simply impossible to concoct a useful EULA without such onerous language. In addition to losing my trust as a user, you’ve managed to insult my intelligence. You guys rule!

    Of course, I can well understand that this type of EULA wording may make Google’s lawyers happy. I hope, in turn, that Google will understand when they find that no one BUT their lawyers is using their software and services. Way to make Microsoft look benign, guys!

  82. Matt, Have you had many reports filtering in through you of users not being able to install Chrome and get it working? I’m referring to:

    http://sonicko.com/online-marketing/google-chrome-crashes-and-burns/

    I’ve had quite a few comments from users with similiar problems.

  83. Follow up: thanks to re-reading this page a fourth and fifth time, I’ve just found the updated post on this topic (cunningly tucked away as a comment on another page).

    If Google has indeed amended the EULA wording, than clearly my earlier comment is already out of date. HOWEVER — I might still ask if the change in wording is going to be applied to Google Docs? I think I’d like to see that happen before I start typing my best-selling novel.

    As of now, I’m more cautious than ever. It’s up to Google to win (back) my trust. Not giving the legal team everything it asks for might be a start.

  84. The only thing not working for me is commenting things on “new facebook”. Very weird because the comment link has a simple onclick handler and if I run the same script in the console the comment box displays. Not when I click the link though.
    >>toggle_feedcomments_box(“65465454”, “5341654534534”, 0);

  85. Hi,

    I see my previous post about the EULA and business apps was deleted, so perhaps this will also, but hey, perhaps not?

    I’ll restate: if I use Chrome to upload a document to a document management app, does the section 11 of EULA imply even a remote chance of some licence being granted for Google on that document?

    Because unless the answer is “absolutely not!” I can’t see how any corporate lawyer would ever allow use of Chrome in the company.

    Matt, I understand you are not directly related with the licensing and EULA formulation, but please forward this up: the EULA really needs some editing.

    Another way to put this: what would happen if Microsoft put that exactly same clause in Office’s EULA?

  86. H Matt, Ok have been using GChrome now for a few hours. Loads very fast and I notice it loads very much the same way as Safari does, e.i. blank for a sec or two then whammo, complete page. Nice. One thing I do like a lot is the source code window. Links are click able directly from the code itself. Innovative as far as I can see. I haven’t known this technique to be available on any other source code page viewer. Sweet.

  87. demopoly and Anon Developer, see http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-license-agreement/ but the short answer is that Google modified that section of the EULA to something very simple:

    “11. Content license from you

    11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”

  88. ZeS, I think that’s on people’s radar.

    Jeff Lawrence, I haven’t seen that happen on my computers. But Chrome is getting exposed to a much wider spectrum of hardware right now. So it’s probably less web pages and more about getting a chance to get bug reports on a wide variety of hardware, I’m guessing.

  89. “Why is Chrome stealthily running under a complicated user agent so it is hard to identify in Google Analytics?”

    Patrick, I think the user agent is “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.A.B.C Safari/525.13”

    where 0.A.B.C is the version number. That’s long, but it’s better to provide a lot of info on e.g. WebKit to my mind. If you wanted trivial, you could just search for “Chrome” in the user-agent string.

  90. Thanks Matt! You really made my day with this 🙂

  91. Dear Matt,

    What you should know is that the EULA does not apply to Dutch users (because the EULA is not easy to save, which is required by law. The form should have an “Save” button in order to make it apply.

  92. Glad to help, Anon Developer.

  93. gman, I was able to load http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ just fine in my copy of Google Chrome..

  94. @Matt: “But competition is good for everyone, because it will push web browsers ahead even faster.”

    You know what’s even better than competition? Cooperation! Collaboration.

    If you (Google) had actually worked with Firefox developers to bring the core improvements to FF3. If the Mozilla Foundation (and its funds and expertise) could gang up with the Google (and its funds and expertise), that would have led to some really nice work.

    I have to ask: why “fork”? Not Invented Here syndrome? What it is that leads Google to do this?

  95. Congratulations to the Google team. Very impressed with Chrome Beta; very small download, installed cleanly, runs MUCH faster than my other browsers. I was prepared to be disappointed by rendering compatibility when I heard it was WebKit based, but so far (touch wood) every one of the sites I’ve developed for clients has loaded perfectly in Chrome.

    The EULA objections are now resolved, and the source IS available.

    The only thing I don’t like about Chrome is the lack of a standard Windows heading bar (I run XP and I expect all my windows to have XP headers), and also the lack of any status bar at the bottom is disconcerting; a bit like Safari on Mac, where the page renders VERY close to the edge of the window. Haven’t worked out where SSL confirmations, privacy indicators, statusbar texts and other stuff goes just yet. My worry is it doesn’t show up at all….

  96. While you say that it uses WebKit and it should be treated the same as Safari. Chrome uses it’s own JavaScript engine (V8) and a different rendering engine (Skia). Two huge difference in the eyes of a web developer. So yes, Google has just tossed yet ANOTHER browser for developers to program against. woooooo……. I agree with Rick, that as a developer i should be programming to a standard. Not to the dizzying array of browsers out there.

  97. Just a quick reply to what Rick wrote –

    “2) “Personally, I do think creating clean code that validates and works on many different browsers will be an important skill for webmasters and web designers.” No. Just no. I should be able to create clean validating code and be able to rely on the browser rendering it correctly and completely without having to hack in a bunch of workarounds. Chrome intrigues me, but now I have to figure out if it really implements all of, say, CSS2 or left out some things.The use of Webkit is a great start, but it’s not guarantee. I long for the day when I can say “My validating page will display fine in all browsers because they all implement standards fully.” Mind you I don’t anticipate seeing that day for a long while….”

    I have been coding for 11 years. I use CSS without hacks and am able to have it appear almost exactly the same in every browser and platform*. I think because I do not rely on hacks, but create standards based code and only use cross browser compliant CSS is why I am able to do so. Are there a few tricks? Yes, especially when dealing with the box model issue, but I never use hacks. Too risky!

    There is a great book on sitepoint that his called The Ultimate CSS Reference.. you might find that they can help you figure out why you are needing the hacks..

    * I credit this for a job I had to do where for the Department of Homeland Security I had to create a W3C, WCAG 1 and 2 site with 508 accessibility that looked the same in all browsers as far back as Netscape 4 and up to at the time IE5 and 6 and FF 1. I learned more than I ever thought possible about CSS. 🙂

  98. “I agree with Rick, that as a developer i should be programming to a standard. Not to the dizzying array of browsers out there.”

    I know for back end it is a nightmare, but for front-end it keeps us real humans employed on the front-(otherwise all companies would need is Dreamweaver or FrontPage and someone to plug in their content)!! So in a very odd way – as much as I cuss it when I have to develop to it – I am very happy for the instability! Otherwise I might have to pass the tin cup .. or work in a real office! Yikes! lol

    On a Chrome point though, on the front-end. it is working in Safari the same as Chrome so we have not had those issues.. can someone tell me what issues we might have as we are .Net 2.0 based with a VB back end .

  99. Vince O'Sullivan

    > Derek Patterson

    The EULA is not resolved. It contains additional wording that states Google do not take copyright of your work but the original sentence, giving them the perpetual right to copy, modify, publish, etc. everything of yours (content, emails, etc.) that you write or read via this browser, is still right there in clause 11.1.

    If you’re happy with that then that’s fine but can you seriously see many companies (or government organisations) allowing this browser to be used by their employees for work related stuff?

  100. Ditto on the comment about Google Reader. Why in the world would anyone complain about Google Reader being supported? It’s a Google product. In fact, I expected it to be integrated and was shocked to learn there was barely any support for bookmarks let alone Google Bookmarks. Extreme comparison but if Apple launches a new music device does iTunes compatibility come later? It would render the device useless for most.

    I know the chrome folks probably already got 5000 messages telling them it doesn’t work well with facebook, so this flies in the face of the marketing that this is designed as an improved interface for applications. Might be better at memory management but what good is that if 50% of users have to research instructions on fixing their mouse control panel properties so their scroll wheel will go up?

    It’s hard to imagine this had any human testing from someone outside google or they would’ve seen these issues at least. Personally, I am glad that google launched this as competition to the market vs pawning their ideas off on Mozilla. The more choices we have the better. But it is a compliment to Google that people were surprised by the limitations and bugs – we expect perfection from Google. The beta tag does not give the company a free ride to say it’s still a work in progress. After all, Gmail still says Beta, and it’s been out and stable for years.. We expect half finished software from Microsoft, not from Google.

  101. See what the German say!
    The Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) has consumers against the use of the new Google Internet browser “Chrome” warned.
    http://www.n-tv.de

  102. I think Google did a good thing to take away some market share in the browser market from Microsoft. This launch will definitely force browser makers to make their browsers more stable and unique. Kudos Google.

  103. Matt – I think Google have done great job with chrome. Sometimes the tech community is too busy critiquing to see what Google’s actually doing for the consumer. I hope that this is a big step towards the holy grail of cloud computing . . . at least for the small guy.

  104. I need to be able to do a print preview in chrome, but I don’t see it as an option. Is it hidden somewhere?

  105. Hi Matt,

    I just tried Chrome today! Great stuff! I love the fast rendering and incognito feature and I’m starting to use it more and more everyday. But on the downside I could not locate any RSS auto-discovery feature. As a blogger and blog reader I hope that feature is added soon.

    Thanks,
    Sapna

  106. Thanks for the info. Despite various comments listed above I think it’s a pretty cool thing for Google to make a browser. I’m excited to use it when it’s available for Linux. And I’m sure it won’t be too big an issue for us web developers.

  107. I’m late to the comment party, but just wanted to say thanks for putting this information together even though was not done in your official capacity.

    Cheers!

  108. I need to be able to do a print preview in chrome, but I don’t see it as an option. Is it hidden somewhere?

  109. Well .. I’m from Pakistan.
    Telling you my locality because I’m not sure that Chrome service is localized or what ?
    I loved to install it, impressed with comics but my experience with chrome is bit strange 😐 ..
    I mean, its not as much faster as Firefox and IE are, even it looks very light .
    (what i experienced)

    May God bless U

    Maryam.

  110. I like it, because it’s much faster than other browsers.
    I don’t like it because there were no plugins made for it yet.

  111. i keep learning about more and more little advantages and quirks with Chrome, with speed, for example; now if only they would take care of it’s cookie management glitches…

  112. It’s not just the speed that I like, it’s the freed up memory I have when using Chrome. Home users should, especially those still in 550MB memory world, should switch now.

    Firefox with 4 tabs eats 120MB of memory.
    Chrome with 6 tabs: 21MB.

  113. Lelouch Lamperouge

    Too many ads. This browser easily beats both Firefox and IE except that it allows way too many ads and no plug-ins to block them — a lot of people have either AdBlock or a standalone program to block ads and frankly seeing them abuse my browsing experience again really ruined the Chrome experience for me. I don’t mind the text ads, they shouldn’t be blocked but flashing banners ? no thanks.

  114. I just want to know why is Chrome not displaying tool tips if you hover over items on the bottom of this page:

    http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/events/brewfest/index.html

    I also tried it on Firefox and it worked.

    And also on Facebook I cant click on some buttons (Confirm friend for example) do I have to set up something or is this some kind of a bug.

    Tnx for answers.

  115. No complaints about Chrome, lovely browser, been using it since beginning of summer and it have never crashed (!). Was reading about your debunkings and such just out of curiosity because my friends keep talking about these things (which their computer teachers tell them(!)). I for one never thought of these things as true and i find your explanations trustworthy. Thanks alot and greetings from sweden 🙂 please forward loads of thanks and congrats for a superb browser. /johan

  116. After reading this, I still can’t see why in the world bookmarks are stored locally. The import feature to copy from IE/FF could just easily import them into Google Bookmarks as it does to the local environment – and if you felt people would complain, how about an option to use Google Bookmarks or the local cache. The “Google Bookmarks Button” add-on for FF is a perfect example of how easy this could be.

  117. Love Chrome … but …

    ~~ Really miss ability to right click a link to a .PDF file and select to save it directly, without having to go through the annoying steps of first displaying THEN saving the .PDF document.

    ~~ Needs a print preview mode. How did they overlook this?

    ~~ Doesn’t support Foxit (.pdf) Reader, has to use the painfully slow and clunky Adobe Reader.

  118. I want to ask if someone knows how to force google stop using the plugin for .pdf files opening within the browser window. I miss the just one click on the link and the file is saved in my hard disk. As Chrome still does with .doc files, for instance.

  119. Hi,
    I never wanted to put this one up thinking it is too lame to say that Chrome is not good.
    It is amazinly fast as compared to IE and marginally faster than Mozilla.
    But,i wonder why it gives me trouble running google flagships sites(gmail,google anayltics)
    Infact,i could never run anayltics properly without the page hanging atleast once
    Still love it for the ease of bookmarking and the UI
    google still rocks

  120. Firstly. Give a CHOICE to the users whether they want to install Google Updater or not.

    Secondly. Give a CHOICE to the users to uninstall Google Updater if they want to. (Nop, a link somewhere in google containing instructions to uninstall Google Updater does not cut it. You know it)

    Thirdly. STOP doing silent updates unotified updates to Chrome. Give a CHOICE to the user whether they want it or not.

  121. personally, i am no internet guru or mastermind, but i spend a huge amount of time on the internet… i was a solid firefox user until it crashed on me for the last time. i found chrome and promptly uninstalled firefox from all my machines. all i ask for is a “foxmarks” style plug in so i don’t need to log into the foxmarks site to retrieve my “thousands” of sorted and categorized bookmarks that i have spent countless hours organizing.

    would it help if i say “PLEASE”?

    who do i need to bribe to write THAT code for us all?

  122. I like Chrome, and started using it since Firefox would not let me access my hotmail, and was crashing everyday. Chrome got me to hotmail, and has only crashed once since i’ve been using it!
    The only trouble i’ve had is that many websites (like this one) are like a “strip” in the center of the screen. 20% of the screen on both sides are just background. Even if I zoom in, it just makes the text bigger, but still only in the center of the screen. I thought I check out all the options, but no luck. Any suggestions?

  123. 2 ? does google chrome work with bt.

    does it work with vista home premium

  124. It does work with vista and the text issue I think has to do with a bug with certain CSS.

  125. Most bugs in Google Chrome will be fixed in early 2009. It will surpass Firefox in 2009 because Google has more money and more developers (it pays Mozilla Firefox). OS x and Linux versions will be available in January 2009. Also extensions/add-ons will be available in 2009.

  126. I love Chrome, but I miss two things (very much, actually…) – one is my google toolbar buttons – though I might as well type “define:” as click the dictionary symbol, I’d like the buttons…

    Secondly – why the “#¤ does it offer to import my IE bookmarks (of which I have none), but it DOESN’T offer to import my google bookmarks?!?

    Do I really need to install a google toolbar as well as chrome? Seems like a waste of space, but all my bookmarks now unavailable .. 🙁

  127. I miss plugins for Chrome, I hope it will be soon available.

  128. I played with CHROME when it came out as beta–nice, but went back to Mo*$##a after a while. When Google Earth 5.0beta came out, I downloaded that program, and was also FORCED to install CHROME and GOOGLE UPDATER–WHY (grrrrrrr) . . .
    someday, when Chrome matures more, I will try it again.

  129. It looks an awful lot like Opera’s Speed Dial which has been around for a while. I have always disliked IE’s browsing history as it stores a history of selected files that have been accessed on the computer as well as the websites visited so the Incognito function is a step in the right direction.

  130. What is the COST??? or What will it COST me?….I got screwed by excite.com when they
    did something sembler to this!

  131. Matt,

    Personally, I prefer to use Chrome compared to any browser currently available. However, my company has a number of intranet sites that require Internet Explorer. Now, for Firefox for instance, there is this add-on so that FF is identified as IE. Any chance that this will be a part of Chrome anytime soon?
    Thanks!

  132. so, going after the massive middle-of-the-curve group of followers who are hog tied to every one of Microsofts whims is the right way to present new technology? Knock, knock, is anyone home? Watch this video for a hint as to why that is the wrong way to go. Hint: they are followers, not leaders.

    Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights ( TED.com video )
    http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/seth_godin_on_sliced_bread.html

  133. Help! I just got google chrome, and it IS much faster than Foxfire, BUT, when I type an e-mail, it doesn’t finish the address for me. this is VERY time consuming. How can I make it finish my addresses, or is this a problem? AND, do I need a , or ; between multiple e-mail addresses. thank you! M.

  134. I had to uninstall chrome and now when I click on a web icon I have to choose the program to open site. That’s 2 extra steps. How to I get things back the way they were? Please help.

  135. Stephanie Lane

    Is there any way for me to get Chrome to recognize my address book in Yahoo Mail? I love every aspect of Chrome except for this one. Thanks!

  136. Matt, I love Chrome (I’m using it right now) but what is up with the printing? I can’t print selections, it forces me to print out whole pages, and with webpages, I can’t gage what sheets I need to print. Printing is a very important part of browsing the internet, and this can’t be overlooked, IMO!

  137. i use google chrome and wow its one of the fastest search engines i have used,but i have had a problem with it,sometimes it want let me read my yahoo mail and i go into tagged.com and i saved my password for the site but when i read my messages soon it stop letting me read them so i log out and when i do i notice chrome google has put my email address and password into the part where u fill out your information to join.why is this happening

  138. I used chrome for a while then suddenly when I opened the page it took me a blank google chrome screen I kept repeatly choosing a personal page but it wouldn’t open no tabs no nothing, I then freaked and uninstalled it, somethings not right with chrome and I’m not going back to it until these bugs are fixed.
    Linda

  139. Dresandreal Sprinklehorn

    I think everyone is wasting their time waiting for a hard-coded Print Preview. If the Chrome Team wanted that it would have been in one of the first few releases.

  140. Hi Matt

    I really like Chrome but as an SEO web developer I don’t use editors as I like clean hand coded XHTML. So I need a browser that allows me to edit the source code either by using the default editor or the ability to change it. Not a problem in IE or Firefox but this does not appear possible in Chrome at the moment. Is this issue going to be addressed – I love everything about the chrome browser but this lack of functionality to me is a real oversight and really needs to be addressed. I appreciate it’s still early days.

    Kind regards

    John Winterton

  141. Dear Matt, I have been a googler and a serious one, I like chrome pretty much and love the way how you have changed the whole web, there is only one thing which can be done or you can suggest, Google Chrome`s font rendering, you being a Mac user please see how safari renders font, it makes the font look good and pleasing to eyes, can this be brought to chrome?

    I remain on web for 12 hours and Chrome is my default browser, but if this can be taken care I will be more than happy.

    I suppose you can see the difference yourself if you open Safari 4.0.5 on Windows and Chrome 4.1 on windows.

    Thanks, and reading Google story these days and just finished a chapter on you, the impact you made on search filtering during early days at google was something that world required

  142. I can’t select an email (eg. read, delete) via the checkoff box in Juno or Verizon webmail because it’s not displayed. Is that a known problem. How do I circumvent it?
    Jeff

  143. Matt, just put chrome as my default browser. Now, how do I erase temp files, sites visited, etc. like IE tab has? Also, IE has screen size blow up 50% 100% 125% 200% etc. how do I do in chrome? And, their is no shortcut selection??

  144. get the following code [oxc00000a5] cant load chrome because of this

css.php