Last year, after two full days of hacking, only one web browser emerged from Pwn2Own unscathed: Google Chrome. IE8, Safari 4, Firefox 3, and even Safari on iOS actually all fell after just one day, but no one could seem to penetrate Chrome. In fact, despite a $10,000 bounty to crack their “sandbox”, no one even tried, likely figuring it was futile. And so this year, Pwn2Own wasn’t even going to… → Read More
First of all, let me say that I think it’s awesome that Google has finally created a simple solution to allow users to opt-out of advertising tracking. This new Chrome extension already seems like a much better idea than the somewhat convoluted controls or browser plug-ins that they’ve created in the past to placate government agencies and concerned users. It’s also great that Mozilla is taking… → Read More
I’m addicted to browser tabs. I probably open several hundred of them each day during my regular web browsing. And today brings good news: Google wants to reward me for that.
Well technically, Google wants to reward charities on my behalf for my obsessive web browsing. A new initiative today called “Chrome for a Cause” asks you to download a Google-made Chrome extension that will note your tab… → Read More
Adblock Plus, easily the most popular Firefox browser extension, recently hit the 100 million downloads milestone. Soon, the developer(s) behind the add-on will be releasing a beta extension for Google Chrome.
We should note that the most popular Chrome extension today is also an ad-blocker, made by Michael Gundlach, who’s trying to turn this into a full-time job (as well). → Read More
Even though it hasn’t exactly worked out the first few times companies have attempted it, there’s another movement underway to create a social browser. Currently, RockMelt, Mozilla, and Flock are all trying to fuse social elements into the way we all surf the web. And two of those are doing it on top of Chrome (or Chromium), RockMelt and Flock. But each of those may simply be too much. Why not… → Read More
Google’s Chrome browser is now being used by 120 million people a month, which is up from 70 million the last time the company disclosed internal usage numbers last May. The new figures were disclosed moments ago at Google’s Chrome event, which Jason is covering live.
The Chrome browser has been seeing big jumps in market share recently, currently taking the No. 3 spot with a 9.26 percent… → Read More
Earlier today, we were tipped about this thread in the Chromium Google Groups area. Gregor Hochmuth, the Product Manager for the Chrome Web Store, responded to a question wondering if Google would be giving developers advanced notice before the store goes live. Hochmuth said that yes, there would be reminders sent out before the launch to let developers get edits and updates in before it rolls… → Read More
Chrome 8 is here! Chrome 8 is here! The latest greatest version of Chrome! Joyous day, right? Don’t tell Google that. The search giant announced the (stable) launch not on their Google blog, and not even on their Google Chrome blog, but on their Google Chrome Releases blog. And in the post, they devote a whole two sentences to it. The rest is all about bug fixes.
But to those who follow Chrome… → Read More
I’m the type of music listener who finds one album he likes and listens to it constantly for about 6 months. Then I move onto the next album. One that’s often old. Part of the reason for this is that I don’t have a really good way to find new music. Pandora is basically my radio and finds me good stuff some of the time, but it’s usually either old music or stuff I already own. If I want to be hip… → Read More
Whenever I ask Google about the versions of Chrome and Chromium, they’re quick to point out that the numbers don’t mean much these days. That said, they still show how quickly the search giant is able to get features implemented that they want to see in their browser. And they’re apparently not happy with the already fast speed at which things are progressing. They want things to go faster. So… → Read More
When I heard that Mozilla would be outlining their own open web app ecosystem for the first time today, my immediate thought was that this was to pre-empt the Chrome Web Store. I still think that, but I think the timing may be even more calculated now. From what I can gather, Google’s launch of the store may be imminent — only a few obstacles remain and the search giant is working quickly to… → Read More
Sometimes, it’s the little things in life.
Earlier this evening, Google published a post on their Chrome Blog highlighting some of their favorite new extensions for the Chrome web browser. As there are now something north of 8,000 Chrome Extensions out there, this seems like a good idea (which Google plans to do regularly) to highlight new ones. But buried at the bottom of the list is one Google… → Read More
It was bound to happen, I suppose.
A week and a half ago, I wrote a post about bloatware, and how we (the customers) are likely the ones to blame for it. In that post, I cited this thread about Google’s Chrome browser in which hundreds of people complain, and bitch, and moan, that it doesn’t have the feature to set an image as your wallpaper. Yes, seriously — hundreds of people have been… → Read More
According to the the latest data from the company, last month, September 2010, marked the first time IE fell below the 50 percent share mark in the past decade. Of course, this data only counts what StatCounter collects, but they claim that it’s a huge dataset worldwide — billions of visits from millions of sites. And the trend is clear: two years ago, two-thirds of those people were browsing the… → Read More
While they’re still only officially saying that the it will launch “later this year”, it appears that Google is taking the steps to get ready for a Chrome Web Store launch very soon. Specifically, a post today highlights that developers can now hook their apps up to Google Checkout merchant accounts (to be able to sell their apps — U.S.-only for the time being), and that there is now a way to… → Read More
On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It’s all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn’t work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly… → Read More
Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features — but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn’t slowing down.
Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This… → Read More
You hit a site; it’s down. You immediately reload; it’s still down. You start to freak out. “How the hell are they down again!? Is anyone in charge over there?! WTF?!” But quite often, it’s just you. And you look like an ass for your rant that you just spewed on Twitter (or on Facebook when it’s Twitter that is down). Thankfully, it looks like Chrome can now potentially save you from… → Read More
Those of you stuck using boring old stable builds of Google’s Chrome web browser are missing out. Chromium (the open source browser that Chrome is based on) is where it’s at. Sure, it may not be as stable as Chrome, but it has some cool new things that Google is working on.
For example, the latest builds of Chromium (already into version 7) include the new “Apps” area above the “Most visited”… → Read More
Earlier this week we covered new details about the Chrome Web Store, an ‘App Store for the web’ that Google first announced at its I/O conference in May. Now Google is giving developers their first taste of what they can expect from the new marketplace: the Chrome Web Store has launched in a developer preview.
Developers can now start uploading apps using the developer dashboard at the Chrome … → Read More
Completely open stores and galleries are great — until you realize that they quickly get loaded up with crap. And especially when you realize that some of that crap is intending to be malicious. With that in mind, Google today is announcing a couple new rules for its Chrome extensions, themes, and soon, apps.
The biggest change is that now all developers will be subject to a one-time $5 fee from… → Read More
Earlier today, it was revealed that development of the Chrome Web Store is well underway, and Google hopes to deploy it around October. That’s good news, and the fact that Google apparently only plans to take a 5 percent of revenues from developers is great news. But look closer at the screenshots leaked from GDC Europe. See that area in the store called “Apps your friends like”? Yes, it appears… → Read More
It looks like Google wasn’t lying when they said they planned to more rapidly iterate their Chrome web browser. Today brought the initial release of version 7 of Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on. If all goes as planned, this latest iteration should begin to trickle into the Chrome stream in just a few weeks.
It wasn’t even a week ago that version 6 of Chrome hit the… → Read More
As regular readers are undoubtedly aware, I have a sort of love/hate relationship with our commenters. Well, okay, it’s more hate/hate. I find it amusing, but I realize not everyone does. Some people say they avoid our stories just so they don’t feel the need to take a shower after reading our comment section. I have good news for those people: there’s an extension for that.
With its Chrome web browser, Google has always been obsessed with speed. And now they’re speeding up another aspect of it: how often stable builds are released. The goal now is to release a new stable version of the browser every six weeks — about twice as fast as they currently do, Google says. In other words, get ready for Chrome 6, 7, 8, and 9 coming soon.
So why is Google doing this? → Read More
When Opera Software last week released the final version of its Opera browser (version 10.60), it titled its press release ‘What is faster than the fastest?’.
The company touts other features, like built-in geolocation and webM support, as well but not nearly as much as it boasts about its browser’s speed.
By doing so, the software maker aims to challenge claims that Google’s Chrome browser is… → Read More
One of the big announcements at this year’s Google I/O was that a new Chrome Web Store was being built. Think of it as Apple’s App Store or the Android Market but for web apps. In it, you’ll be able to purchase (or download for free) and install apps that can run in Google’s Chrome web browser. Google would only commit to the store and apps being ready “later this year,” but work on app… → Read More
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is showing early signs of a ‘comeback’, reversing a practically constant slide in browser usage over the past few years for the month of June, according to figures just released by Net Applications.
Still the dominant browser in terms of market share any way you slice it, Internet Explorer appears to be reclaiming share at the expense of Mozilla Firefox… → Read More
As we noted a few days ago, the latest stable builds of Google Chrome now come with native Flash support built-in by default. The hope behind this is to get better performance and better security out of Adobe’s plug-in. To showcase how well it works, Google has created a Flash-based game on top of YouTube, Chrome Fastball. It’s pretty nifty.
If you go to this page you YouTube, you’ll find the… → Read More
According to website analytics company StatCounter, Google Chrome has now overtaken Apple’s Safari in the US browser market for the first time on a weekly basis, claiming third place overall.
StatCounter, which says it analyzed some 874 million pages viewed on its network of over 3 million websites in the US alone for the week 21 to 27 June 2010, pegs Chrome’s market share at 8.97%, ahead of… → Read More
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