May 22nd, 2013

Google Adds Conversational Search In Latest Chrome Build, We Go Voice On

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Google has updated Chrome in build 27 to include conversational voice search, a feature it demoed on stage at Google I/O this year that allows you to search by voice, but also transcribes your queries in real time and lets you use natural language, asking Google straightforward questions and getting straightforward answers, both read back to you by dictation and in actual Google search results. → Read More

May 29th, 2012

Google Brings ChromeOS To The Desktop, Launches Its First Chromebox

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Google, together with its partner Samsung, launched a new Chromebook and its first desktop Chromebox today. The most important change to the new Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is that it is significantly faster. While earlier versions featured a battery-friendly Intel Atom chip, these first Chromebooks often felt underpowered. This new version features an Intel Core chip, as well as 4GB of RAM, an HD… → Read More

May 21st, 2012

StatCounter: Google Chrome Pushes Past Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (Again)

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Well, it’s official. Or at least it’s official if you believe in StatCounter’s data. Google’s Chrome web browser has overtaken Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. For real this time. Maybe. The stat-counting firm compiled data for the week of May 14th through May 20th, showing that Chrome had a market share of 32.76%, compared with IE’s 31.94%. This isn’t the first time that Chrome has gotten ahead… → Read More

April 17th, 2012

Chrome For Android Gets Desktop View, Home Screen Bookmarks, File Downloads

Chrome Beta - Android Apps on Google Play

Chrome for Android is becoming somewhat of a flagship product for Google, but given that it’s only available on phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich, its reach is pretty limited. It’s still one of the best mobile browsers on the market, though, and Google is adding a number of cool features to it today. Chrome for Android is now also available in 31 additional languages and in all… → Read More

November 16th, 2011

Evernote Clearly Knows How To Make Web Reading, Clipping Easier

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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… → Read More

October 26th, 2011

CBS Launches “60 Minutes” Chrome Web App, Features Interview With Steve Jobs Biographer

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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

October 25th, 2011

Google Gives Chrome Web Store A Welcome New Lick Of Paint

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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

August 11th, 2011

Google Unleashes Native Client Into Chrome, Next-Gen Web Apps To Follow?

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For well over a year now, Google has been hyping up something called Native Client. It’s an open source technology that allows a web browser to run compiled native code. In other words, it’s a potential missing link between native apps and web apps. And now it’s finally getting baked into Chrome.

As Google notes on their Chrome Blog blog today, the latest beta version of Chrome (version 14) has… → Read More

August 5th, 2011

Chrome Lion Full Screen Support Is Ready To Go In Canary, Both With Tabs And Without

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Following up on our earlier coverage of Google’s Chrome browser for OS X Lion, it looks like development is moving along faster than expected. Specifically, swiping gesture support has already been fully implemented (in the right direction now too), and now a proper full screen mode has hit the Canary build of the browser as well.

Shortly after Lion’s launch a few weeks ago, we noted the Chrome… → Read More

July 26th, 2011

The Good: Chrome Gets OS X Lion Two-Finger Gestures! The Bad: They’re Backwards.

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Considering that it hasn’t even been out a week yet, it shouldn’t be too surprising that many users and developers are still getting used to OS X Lion. This includes Google, makers of the popular Chrome web browser. While we previously noted that a version specifically tailored for Lion was in the works, Google said that it may take a little while. But an update today already brings two key… → Read More

July 13th, 2011

Google Getting Serious About Chrome Profiles, The Logged-In Experience

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The meteoric rise of Google’s Chrome web browser has a side effect that I think a lot of people are missing. It gives Google, which wants to continue to be the center of the web in the face of a huge challenge by Facebook, the ultimate weapon. And while Google will never admit this, they don’t have to. We’re already seeing it.

The latest builds of Chrome (version 14 in the Canary channel)… → Read More

June 16th, 2011

Chrome 13 Hits Beta, Google Touts "Print Preview" Feature. For Serious.

Google Chrome first launched on September 1, 2008. The very next day, someone filed a “bug” report on the Chromium project page stating the following:
There is no option for a print preview. I think that this is needed so that you can see what the page will look like before wasting paper and toner. → Read More

May 17th, 2011

Why Isn't Google Chrome A Part Of Android?

Over the past couple of years covering Google, there’s one seemingly simple question that comes up again and again, that Google just can’t seem to answer. Why isn’t Chrome a part of Android?

Read the wrong way, that could seem like a deep question. But it almost never means “why isn’t Chrome OS simply merged with Android?” or the like. Most of the time, it’s simply a question wondering why… → Read More

May 15th, 2011

Initial Thoughts On The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook

Google has finally made good on their promise to deliver Chrome OS to the world this summer. Or they will, on June 15 when the first Chromebooks are available. Considering that I’m potentially the perfect type of user for such a machine — that is, nearly everything I do these days is in the browser — I’ve been very interested in the OS/product development. Last week, I got my hands on one of… → Read More

May 11th, 2011

The Future Of Chrome: Synced Tabs, Profiles, Native Client, And Chrome OS On ARM

Today at Google I/O there was a fireside chat with a number of Chrome team members. Their goal was simply to answer questions — both from the web and from the audience. Among those, there was a common theme: what’s next?

One question asked each panelist what features they were most excited about going forward? Some answers were general — excitement about pushing HTML and CSS work forward. But… → Read More

May 5th, 2011

Google Calls Out Rivals' Web Benchmark Tools, Rebuilds Them To Better Gauge Chrome

When it comes to Chrome, Google has long been addicted to speed. And for many tasks on the web today, that speed is related to how fast your JavaScript engine is. Google has long held that their’s is the fastest. But it’s hard to know for sure because there are a few different benchmark suites to test such speeds — and the most popular ones are made by companies with stakes in the game: Apple… → Read More

May 3rd, 2011

Google's Chrome Team Lends Their Support To The It Gets Better Project With A New Video

A few weeks ago, a video entered wide circulation in the tech press for two reasons: 1) it featured lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Apple employees talking about their difficulties growing up. And 2) it was very, very well made. But the truth is that the It Gets Better Project has been around since last September, when columnist and author Dan Savage kicked things off with his own… → Read More

May 2nd, 2011

Yep, Google Just Pushed Chrome Canary For Mac Out Of The Nest

This morning, we noted that Google was getting ready to release an OS X version of the Chrome Canary build. Sure enough, just hours later, here it is.

Canary is the pre-Dev build of Chrome meant for users who enjoy testing new things early and often and don’t mind some bugs and hiccups along the way. It’s meant to be run alongside the more stable builds of Chrome, so you can have the best of both… → Read More

May 2nd, 2011

Google Chrome Canary About To Hit OS X — Chrome 16 Due Before End Of Year

Users of Google Chrome are probably aware of the three channels you can use depending on how cutting edge you want to be (and how much you mind bugs): Dev, Beta, Stable. But ever since last year, there’s actually been a fourth channel as well that’s less publicized: Canary. Sadly, it has been a Windows-only build until now. But it looks like that’s about to change.

Given the talk in the Chromium… → Read More

April 26th, 2011

Google Chrome Can Now Clean Up Flash's Cookie Mess

I still don’t particularly like the fact that Google decided to bundle Adobe Flash with their Chrome web browser about a year ago. Apple preference aside, the last thing I want is the buggy, often insecure, and performance killing plug-in shoved in my face. More importantly, I think it’s a maneuver that will only serve to slow the transition to HTML5. But Google has their reasons. And today, we… → Read More

April 14th, 2011

Google Is A Bit Unpolished When It Comes To Chrome

Today during the Q1 2011 earnings call, Google had a few things to say about Chrome and Chrome OS that were interesting. Well, more like intriguing — because they were a bit odd.

First of all, a few times during the call, Google executives touted the fact that Chrome now has 120 million active daily users. This is supposedly up 40 percent in the past year, which sounds about right. But they… → Read More

March 21st, 2011

Google's New Chrome Icon: Less Simon-Like, More Hurricane-Like; Easier To Draw

For a few weeks now, anyone using Chromium (the open source browser on which Google Chrome is built) will have noticed something: a completely new icon. It’s simpler and cleaner, and overall looks a little bit less like a Simon. And more recently, users of the developer builds of Chrome will have likely noticed the new icon as well. And soon everyone will see it, Google explains in a post… → Read More

March 8th, 2011

Speedier, Easier Google Chrome Browser Now Out Of Beta

Three weeks ago, Google kicked off the Year of the Rabbit with a beta version of Chrome 10. Today, the company is launching a stable release of the upgraded desktop browser solution, which it points out comes with a speed boost that corresponds to a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite.

Get it here, while it’s hot. → Read More

March 5th, 2011

First Piece of Mozilla's Web Apps Project Arrives, But Can it Outfox Chrome?

At great long last, Mozilla has revealed the first developer release of their Web Apps Project, which aims to build the infrastructure for an open web app ecosystem.

Back in May of 2010, Google announced plans for what would become the Chrome Web Store. Mozilla responded immediately with plans for its own web store, now known as the Web Apps Project.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google was first to… → Read More

February 27th, 2011

Burning Chrome

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“A good player goes where the puck is. A great player goes where the puck is going to be”—The Great One

Google made a few interesting announcements this week. First, Google Docs Viewer support for a sheaf of new document types, including Excel, Powerpoint, Photoshop and PostScript. Second, Chrome’s new ability to run background apps that run seamlessly and invisibly behind the browser. Third… → Read More

February 23rd, 2011

Google Details Chrome's Background Feature: Run Web Apps Without Seeing Them

Google has been on a mission lately to outline some of the cooler, newer features coming to Chrome on their Chromium Blog. Today brings one of the biggest yet: Background Apps.

This feature has existed on various builds of Chrome/Chromium for some time now. But Google hasn’t been touting it, and it wasn’t really clear how it would be used and/or useful. Well today, it’s very clear. And again… → Read More

February 22nd, 2011

One Browser Input To Rule Them All: Here Come The Chrome Omnibox Extensions

If Chrome’s best feature is its speed, it’s second best feature has to be the Omnibox. I’m still not sure why every browser doesn’t simply offer one box for both searching and typing in URLs. But the Omnibox is about to get even more powerful, as developers have started fleshing out extensions to take advantage of it.

Google first talked about the Omnibox API back in August of last year, but at… → Read More

February 18th, 2011

The Missing Native/Web App Link: Google Says Native Client Almost Ready To Go

We’ve written a number of things about the contrast between native apps and web apps. The common consensus these days is that the two will eventually converge — but that has been happening more slowly than some have been hoping, particularly in the mobile space where native apps dominate. On the more traditional side of things, the transition is happening faster, but something Google has been… → Read More

February 17th, 2011

'Year Of The Rabbit' Begins As Chrome 10 Hops Into Beta With 'Crankshaft' JavaScript

As they have made abundantly clear over the past several months, Google hates talking about the version numbers of Chrome.

Well, except when they have something to talk about. Which is actually quite often.

Today brings another post highlighting some new features in Chrome 10, which has just hit the beta channel of the browser.

In the spirit of the lunar new year, we’re excited to kick off→ Read More

February 17th, 2011

Google Opens Developer Preview Of Chrome Web Store In 15 More Countries

After months of anticipation, Google finally unveiled the Chrome Web Store this past December. But a lot of users were disappointed with the launch for one very big reason: it was U.S.-only. Starting today, Google is finally taking the initial steps to change that, as they’ve opened a developer preview of the Web Store for 15 more countries.

Note that this doesn’t mean the store is ready quite… → Read More