Following yesterday’s release of the new mobile version of the Chrome browser, Google is today launching an improved version of its desktop counterpart. The updated release of Chrome (Stable version) brings several features beta users have had since January, most notably omnibox pre-rendering and increased security protections.
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Google’s move to demote the Chrome website in search rankings in January led to a decline in browser market share, according to new data from Net Applications. Google’s Chrome web browser dropped from 19.11% in December to 18.94% in January, the firm found. Meanwhile, among the other browsers, only Internet Explorer saw significant gains during the month, going from 51.87% in December to 52.96% in January.
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Google appears to have paid bloggers to write about Chrome in a way that violates its own paid link policy, according to Search Engine Land. If Google applied a similar penalty to those it’s doled out to past violators, the Chrome download page would be removed from its search engine results for between a month and a year. Don’t bet on that happening, though. The campaign is another example of how Google’s diverse business can lead it to trip over itself. → Read More
The past few days, there’s been a lot of talk about web browsers. The report that Google will be paying Mozilla close to one billion dollars over the next three years to ensure that their search engine remains the default for Firefox is fascinating for a few reasons. The biggest is that Google now makes a Firefox competitor, Chrome. And it got me thinking about Safari.
Remember Safari?
While Chrome has skyrocketed from 0 percent market share in August 2008 to over 25 percent last month, Apple’s web browser lingers somewhere between 5 and 8 percent, depending on what numbers you look at. While its growth seemed to stall out in late 2008/early 2009, Safari has been growing again since then. But it has been at a very slow, methodical pace compared to the Google browser. → Read More
It’s not always easy to tell when Chrome has been updated, and at any rate the changes aren’t always significant enough to even wonder about it. But a pair of features worth caring about are user-bound come early 2012, according to Google developer advocate Paul Kinlan, who spoke recently at the Develop conference in Liverpool.
The conference is focused on game development, so it’s no surprise that the features are also game-centric. First, there will be plug-and-play gamepad, webcam, and microphone support in Chrome, and second, the nascent real time communication protocol WebRTC will begin to be implemented as well. This opens the door for seamless video chat and conceivably OnLive-like gaming services. → Read More
What is it?
Is it a messenger bag? Is it a briefcase? How about both? Chrome’s Anton laptop bag is equal parts business and play. It comes in both green and black and has a real military feel to it, at least in army green. It may not have the most pockets, or be the lightest bag I’ve toted around, but I can’t help but love it. You can tell the user was in mind during the design process, as proven by swiveling shoulder strap hooks and the cross pattern of the Velcro. It is, after all, the little things that count.
Made of nylon and military spec wax-coated canvas, the Anton is heavy duty enough for a tornado chaser. I got stuck in a down-pour yesterday and was really worried about my laptop, but it was safe and dry thanks to the Anton. When the bag is full, it takes on a very boxy shape much like a brief case. When packed with a couple knick knacks, it sports a much more casual look. → Read More
Evernote is today introducing its first stand-alone product since Peek: a browser extension called Clearly that enables “distraction-free online reading”. Only available as a Chrome add-on for now, Evernote Clearly removes ads, links, navigational elements and whatnot from any block of text you’d like to read on the Web and lets you easily save it to Evernote to read later.
If that sounds a lot like the core functionality of the likes of Readability or Instapaper, you’re probably thinking in the right direction. → Read More
What is it?
Boy am I enjoying bag week. Incase’s Alloy series Compact Backpack was quite the treat, but I have wandering eyes which have now led me to the Chrome Krakow Laptop Bag. The thing about the Krakow is that it can withstand just about anything, which seems to be the trend at Chrome. The company is all about letting you go wild and crazy while keeping your gadgetry safe and snug in your bag. That said, the Krakow falls in line well, and has a design to prove it.
The bag sports industrial metal strap adjusters, along with two metal hooks on the straps themselves. Just from looking at it you can tell the bag is made for some heavy wear and tear, made obvious by the nylon construction with polyurethane coating. But what isn’t so obvious is the weatherproof military-grade truck tarpaulin liner on the inside. To put it plainly, you’d have trouble getting your laptop wet in this bag. → Read More
What is it?
If you’re planning on taking a semester off and fly to Europe just to clear your head and get over “her” (or “him”), you’re going to need a backpack. That’s why Chrome made the Yalta, a backpack that looks like a cross between an Weimar-Era bondage truss and something the Good Soldier Švejk would carry through the trenches of World War I.
This is not to say that the Yalta is only for those who browse army surplus shops. This “duffel” style backpack has a large top opening and a rear pocket designed to allow for a laptop (no bigger than the Macbook Air) and/or a tablet. There is also a front pocket. To close it, you simply roll up the lip at the top and connect the chromed metal hook into one of the loops sewn to the back of the backpack. The hook, it should be noted, can double as a bottle opener. → Read More
Google is shipping more Google+ features today designed to increase user engagement and sharing. These include a YouTube slider that lets you watch and share YouTube videos with your Google+ friends and two new Google Chrome extensions for sharing webpages and tracking your Google+ notifications. → Read More
In what I think is an interesting experiment, CBS this morning debuted a “60 Minutes” application that you can find in and launch from the Chrome Web Store (which just got a major facelift).
Granted, “adding it to Chrome” doesn’t really do anything but take you to this page, which you can just open in Chrome just like you would any page, but the Web app does look pretty nice. → Read More
Looks like Google this morning rolled out a brand new design for its Chrome Web Store, and it’s a major improvement.
The updated Web app marketplace, first released in December 2010, is all about the software, now boasting large squares with attractive app visuals. → Read More
Google announced today that its business and educational customers now have a second option for purchasing its new Chrome OS-powered laptops: upfront pricing, sans subscription. Previously, Chromebooks were only available to these institutions by way of a 3-year commitment. That plan didn’t fit in well with some organization’s yearly budget cycle, says Google.
Now, those customers can choose whether to buy Chromebooks on a subscription basis or just pay for the laptops up front. → Read More
On September 1st, Google’s popular browser, Chrome, celebrated its third birthday. In a relatively short span of time, Chrome has gobbled up 22 percent market share among browsers, compared to Firefox at 28 percent and IE at 42 percent. The browser continues to iterate, now working in rapid-fire six-week release cycles, and its ecosystem at large has taken some big strides forward over the last year. For me, personally, I use multiple browsers daily, but Chrome has really become my go-to.
In December, Google debuted Chrome OS and the Chrome Web Store, followed by Chromebooks in June. But, as Jason pointed out in last week’s post, as well as our early coverage in January, the Chrome Web Store had seemingly gotten off to a slow start, perhaps not attracting as much traffic (and, more importantly, sales) as expected prior to launch. → Read More
Yesterday, we noted that Google quietly rolled out their +1 Button Chrome extension a couple days ago. It’s more powerful than it may seem because you can now easily +1 any page you’re browsing on the web regardless of if the owner of that content placed a button on their site. Just imagine if Facebook has such a extension for their Like Button.. Actually, you don’t have to imagine.
Shortly after our post went up, we were pointed to this extension in the Chrome Web Store. Sure enough, it’s a Facebook Like Button extension, that according to Google’s “verified author” service is indeed built by Facebook itself. What’s surprising is hardly anyone knows about this extension, it has just 500 users! → Read More
Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android? It’s a question as old as time itself. Or at least a few years old. But given that the same company, Google, makes both products, it never made much sense. Now they’re finally taking steps to resolve this. A bit. Maybe.
As a group of Googlers have announced on the WebKit-Dev group today (relayed by Google’s Peter Beverloo), the Android team is now committed to working more closely with the WebKit community. Yes, it’s a bit odd that a product so devoted to “open” wasn’t really working with the open source community before — but hey, better late than never. → Read More
If you’re on a website that uses accounts, the sign in button can be anywhere. Sure, there are some common best practices, but I can think of dozens of sites that put them all over the place. Mozilla is looking to fix that, by bringing the sign in to the browser level.
A new experimental extension that Mozilla has released for Firefox does exactly this. When it’s installed, you’ll see a new “Sign In” button just to the left of the URL box. Clicking this, pops open a window that prompts you for a username and password for the site you’re on. It then shows you when you’re signed into a site, and gives you one-click ability to sign out. Easy. Simple. Nice. → Read More
NaClBox (get it?) is a port of DOSBox that allows DOS games to be played right in your browser. Right now you can play titles like Star Wars Tie Fighter complete with multi-voice MIDI sound and hot hot VGA graphics. It works on Macs, PCs, and Linux machines and runs under Chrome 13.
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Facebook is working with a number of partners to prepare for the launch of a music service – possibly called ‘Vibes’ – inside the astoundingly popular social networking site. While you wait, I advise you to check out the amazing +Music extension for Google Chrome (here’s a direct link to the extension). → Read More
Compuware’s benchmarks division, Gomez, has just released new data from a website measurement project whose goal was to determine what the fastest web browser is in the “real world” of desktop users. The project only measured load times of users on broadband connections.
The data, collected over a one-month time frame, captured the results of 1.86 billion individual measurements on over 200 websites. The results of the test? No surprise here – the winner is Google Chrome. → Read More
