So...did you greet the news that Google unveiled its own browser last Tuesday with a roll of your eyes, as in, "Whatever?" And perhaps you think anyone who fawned over it is nuts as in, "Google could put out a poo brick and people would fawn over it." Well, that's not my M.O. Yes, I really do like and frequently use Google Docs as well as Picasa. If I could figure out how to use Sites more effectively I probably would. I sometimes use Gmail, Google News, and Google Search itself. But I still find myself spending more time with Yahoo! overall. And Google Earth, while cool at a certain level, doesn't capture my attention for too long. Plus it can suck the life out of one's machine.
But I digress. Who needs another browser? Well, we all do. Ever more competition in the browser wars is a good thing. We don't need more monopolies, and healthy competition benefits more wallets. Plus there's the innovation factor. Firefox is extremely cool (and I haven't even begun to explore the plethora of add-ins, etc.) and is making Microsoft more responsive to evolving Internet Explorer and making it cooler as well. But Google's "
story" with its new Chrome browser is compelling. Here are a few things I like about Chrome:
1) It is simple, clean, unfettered, and fast. Out of the box, it doesn't even come with a home page button although you can easily add one. Translation: more real estate for actually looking at Web pages.
2) The "Create Application Shortcuts" feature is neat. With it, you can easily create an icon sitting on your desktop or taskbar directly to a Web application...like Pandora, or Google Docs, or Yahoo! Mail, or Typepad, or...Nice.
3) Things like the "Options" feature and Help/Documentation are in typical Google "plain dumb simple" mode. In the case of the "Options" feature, the user is given three tabs to choose from: Basics, Minor Tweaks, and Under the Hood. Even the Under the Hood settings are fairly elementary for anyone behind a corporate firewall.
I'll leave it to other reviewers and Google itself (see the "story" link above) to explain the other virtues of this browser in performance, security, etc.
Hey, it's definitely a beta. Not everything will work in it (Rhapsody, for one...and the Java file uploading feature in
box.net). But I'd encourage you to give it a try. It takes a couple of minutes to download and is fun. Yes, you know you've been living in the suburbs for too long if you think screwing around with a new browser is "fun," but...
WHATEVER.
Oh, if you're concerned about Google knowing everything you ever do on the Web, 1) use anything but Google as your default search engine--you get to change it when installing the software and in Options if you forget to do so, 2) get familiar with the "incognito window" feature.
Remember, it wasn't too long ago that the perception was Microsoft had won the browser wars and owned the market. Now, according to multiple sources Firefox owns nearly 20% of the market. And both Firefox and Chrome are open source, meaning more innovation...we hope. So here is my amazingly profound conclusion: This is all good.
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