5 responses to “Chrome 3 is here”

1. 

   J September 16th, 2009 at 07:41

   Woody, would you please elaborate on the following comments you made about Chrome:

   “in some ways (to my way of thinking) better than Firefox”

   “Google is keeping tabs on where you’re going”

   “Chrome is inherently far more secure than either IE 8 or Firefox”

   For users that are looking for privacy and security as much as possible, we would like to hear more details about your comments regarding Chrome in comparison to Firefox.

   Thanks again for sharing the details that readers crave!

2. 

   woody September 16th, 2009 at 07:54

   J -

   I think that Chrome will be better than Firefox (and in some cases already is better) because it incorporates a from-the-ground-up re-thinking of the way a browser should work. When you play with it, you see that it works a little differently – new tabs being a good example – and I generally like the changes.

   Chrome has had a tortuous history of phoning home. I don’t know if Chrome 3 sends full history logs to Google, and I suspect we won’t know full details for weeks or months, but given the track record, I don’t trust it to protect my privacy.

   Chrome appears to be much less vulnerable to attack, according to folks at the Black Hat Conference. I think it’s because Google really did re-think and re-engineer the way a browser works.

   Of course, it’s going to have security holes. It’s relatively new, so it may take longer for the holes to appear. But I believe Google’s headed on the right track – in every way except privacy. Much remains to be seen.

3. 

   EP September 18th, 2009 at 21:49

   Not only that Woody, I have seen Google Chrome use less memory and cpu resources than Firefox on some flash-animated web sites and is sometimes faster in loading pages than Firefox.

   Official Chrome 3.0 version is 3.0.195.21 which I have on my XP laptop. Google Chrome is still missing some essential features such as Clearing Browser Cache on Exit and Print Preview, which Firefox/IE/Opera/Safari browsers have. I’m NOT going to print web pages from Chrome without Print Preview.

   Chrome 4.0, however in development, will add support for the Mac and Linux platforms.

4. 

   Nhi32 September 19th, 2009 at 06:26

   Woody,

   Google Chrome does have the incognito modus which seems equivalent to Firefox’s and IE’s privacy modes. The following page from Chrome’s Help may be useful:
   http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95464

5. 

   woody September 19th, 2009 at 10:53

   Nhi32 -

   Good point and I stand corrected. But I have to wonder out loud if going into incognito mode blocks Chrome from phoning home to Google Central with surfing details.

   It’s the age-old question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?