Ask HN: Will you be switching to Chrome?
I think I'll be switching to Chrome. I always thought IE and Firefox could be slimmed down. What are your thoughts?
Talk about killing the golden goose.
Then again, they may decide the number of people who knew about and actually use ad block plugins is relatively small, so they may allow them.
Personally, I'd rather see the porting finished first.
Note: spydez - this isn't in any way meant as a personal attack, it just seemed like the right place to put my opinion on the matter.
I'm overwhelmed as it is...ad-blocking really helps turn down the noise. To me the whole approach of blasting users with advertisement is flawed, unless of course I'm actually in the mode of purchasing something, in which case I will gladly jump to Chrome or Safari (on my Mac at home).
I think having the freedom to turn the noise off/on as you see fit is part of a larger trend of the future where you have the option to do as you wish. Afterall, isn't freedom one of the core principles of the internet?
But if I ever do come up with an awesome idea, I'm determined I'll create it and make money off of it without putting up adverts. I hate adverts with a burning passion and I'm not about to force them down my potential users throats.
Blocking ads is like anti-bacterial soap. It makes your immunity to these things much lower if that is why you are so bothered by ads. Block ads on sites that you don't frequent, but ones that you do, throw some pennies in the hat.
The reality of ad blocking software (which is spreading quickly and won't stop until it's as ubiquitous as popup blocking is now) is that you'll have to find a better, more integrated business model at some point.
I still don't know why IE doesn't ship with ad blockers. Would it hurt them? Perhaps in the short run. But in the long run, it would do far more damage to G.
I use an adblocker because I find the flashing images annoying. But text ads don't really offend me in any way.
I actually like some of the ads we get in the papers\magazines\television.
I tried to block onlines ads myself - I used to use AdBlock (not Plus) with no downloaded filtersets - but I could not keep up, and they just kept getting more and more and more annoying.
I hate getting yelled at, basically.
While I agree that hackers often don't click ads some do - particularly if the ads are targeted to this demographic. In this respect it's noteworthy that sites such as Reddit and Slashdot derive their income from showing ads. And their primary audience is hackers.
Chrome offers nothing new right now aside from potential performance gains. If the beta version is crashing, that is worse for performance than slow-loading pages.
Chrome offers nothing new right now aside from potential performance gains.
Still. The Webkit-based JavaScript engine performance gain IS something new.
It looks like Opera is starting to recognize this too, which should help increase support for their browser eventually too.
For now, I just use Chrome for my "24/7" tabs like feeds and online email. I never have to close them and it loads at "notepad-like" speed :)
If nothing else I think Chrome sets the bar higher for the incumbents - process isolation in a browser is a nice innovation.
Cheers
The biggest irritations so far are the lack of "View Selection Source", and of course, no Firebug (though the built-in element inspector in Chrome is very impressive, but I haven't played enough with it to be convinced it can do everything Firebug can).
Have you tried Opera? I use Windows and FreeBSD, so as Chrome isn't availble on FreeBSD yet I'll probably run Chrome on Windows and Opera on FreeBSD.
The UI is really cluttered in terms of all the different bars and buttons that I didn't quite know what to do with.
Chrome just feels nice. There are some tabs, theres an address bar, and there is a back/forward and reload. I think there are other features too, I just don't see them ;)
Once you've taken away all the clutter, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome all look quite similar (you can't remove much from IE7). Chrome is still the fastest by a huge margin, which is why I'll probably start using it on Windows.
I got used to it after awhile though, so I guess it was okay.
However, every Opera 9.5X release has had at least one major, show-stopping problem for me. I'm pretty sick of it, so as soon as Chrome gets AdBlock, I'll seriously consider switching.
I've also read that IE8 has some nice features that Chrome does not have or doesn't do as well. I'd prefer to avoid IE8, but you never know, maybe MS got something right this time around??
I filed irritation bugs via the "Page menu"->Report bug or broken website..., but I don't know if they go anywhere useful.
I'd like too though.
It's also too obsessed with tabs, which I find dumb (I already have a taskbar in my OS, thanks), and a few UI bugs are stopping me.
I'd prefer to have Flashblock/Adblock Plus too.
[edit] Oh, and from a tech point of view separate "process" pages I find interesting, but I'm not sure that it's solving a problem I currently have.
Portable Firefox: I use workstations at three different locations during the course of my day. Using Portable Firefox to keep my settings, bookmarks and saved passwords consistent on each machine is a MUST for me.
Adblock: Not necessary, but definitely nice to have.
So yeah, while my use case is pretty specific, Firefox fits it to a T.
- I got hard crash, real BSOD, not just browser
- constant disk trashing (comes from "Phishing and malware protection" feature)
- Flash is actually much slower than FF/Opera/Explorer
- no way for me to import Firefox bookmarks (it doesn't appear in menu)
- don't try "about:%"Firefox has gone through many years of trial by fire and I am reasonably sure that I am not going to get pwned by browsing to a malicious site with firefox.
I love the "incognito mode", but while playing youpr0n flash movies it will freeze once and a while, and especially if you scrolled up and down.
Not industrial grade yet. :P
For lightweight browsing, K-Meleon or Epiphany do the job fine.
For lighterweight browsing, Dillo, lynx, w3m.
I don't see the problem Chrome is trying to solve.
If Chrome gets a big following, I'll download it. But I don't have a particular problem that I need fixing. If the JS performance is as slick as they say, then perhaps a killer web site will come along and cause me to download and use Chrome more. So far, that ain't happening.
The financial interest of Google is not to make money on the browser, but to change the game and move as many apps on to the Internet and away from the computer as possible. This is where their strength lies, and they know it.
In my opinion this is a genius and bold move to which Microsoft basically has no countermoves. If they play along and get better javascript performance in IE apps move to the web, if they don't IE will fall behind firefox and chrome. Either way Google wins.
They don't care about making money on the browser. They care about moving everything into the(ir) cloud.
Now they certainly could have written their own rendering engine, but if time has shown anything it's that this is not easy task (look at the lag time between release to market and efficient rendering for any of the big engines). And in this case it would have likely meant the death of the project to step out with an inefficient root rendering engine.
Okay... so let's assume the above. They are forced to open source the components that link in with Web Kit, but they keep the Javascript VM closed and license that. We now get to throw into contention that there is any significant cash flow available to license. I think that's certainly suspect.
So finally let's think about why google might not care. This isn't about making a money move. Much like releasing IE back in the 90's wasn't a money move for MS. It is however a platform move. Google has a number of very resource intensive javascript applications, a number of which are common for people to have open at the same time. That requires have a better framework for dealing with these kinds of tasks. Chrome is an attempt to provide that.
It's not even clear if this is a serious browser bid, or more of a road map for other browser vendors to emulate. In the end it doesn't matter. Google's revenue stream requires eyeballs, lots of them. And the eyeballs are asking for better performance, Chrome is a means to that end.