The Four-eyed Journal » Google Chrome

Sony Vaio PCs come with Google Chrome

jhay — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:42:53 +0000

In its latest effort to gain a bigger share of the web browser market, Google has forged a partnership with Sony in which the latter’s PCs will ship with Google Chrome pre-installed, instead of Internet Explorer. The Financial Times reports:

Google confirmed that Sony PCs carrying Chrome had started to go on sale and said it was in talks for similar deals with other computer makers. It said the arrangement was “experimental” and part of wider efforts to boost distribution, including a deal to make Chrome available to internet users who download the RealPlayer software and the company’s first use of television advertising.

Who could resist the world’s most powerful web right? With a reported 2% share of the current web browser market, Google definitely needs to step up its efforts it if wants to dethrone IE as the world’s number web browser.

But what really interested me is this remark by Google executives as mentioned in the FT report:

Google executives express frustration at what they consider a lack of interest among internet users about browsers. “Awareness is shockingly low” given how much people rely on browsers, said Mr Rakowski. “It’s absolutely a problem that people don’t know what a browser is, or how to evaluate one.”

I believe this could be attributed to the fact that IE has been shipped with almost every version of Windows for years which gave Microsoft all the leverage it needed to capture the web browser market from the beginning. Others simply needed to be bold, creative and daring to be of serious competition to IE.

Will this partnership with Sony help Google Chrome grow its share of the web browser market? It remains to be seen, but for now, it is a step in the positive direction.

Chrome Shorts – Google promotes Chrome on YouTube

jhay — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:12:32 +0000

As reported by paidContent.org, Google rarely advertises its directly advertises its products. When it does, people certainly notices them. The latest of which is a collection of short clips highlighting the features of its own browser, Google Chrome.

The web giant commissioned indie illustrators and creative shops to make the shorts, all 11 videos of it and placed it on its own YouTube channel, Google Shorts.

Here’s my favorite clip “Evolution of Short” by Pantograph:

Simplicity is just beautiful! There are ten other short clips with a diverse take on presenting the neat features of Chrome. It’s quite impressive that none of the clips had made mention of any of Chrome’s competitors, perhaps it’s a way to avoid the “ad-wars” between Apple and Microsoft.

Nonetheless, the clips does a good job of getting more attention for Google Chrome which according to reports, is still way behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox in terms of market share.

The biggest culprit is the lack of support for plugins and extensions which have become one of Firefox’s strongest selling points. I know many of my friends have been impressed by Chrome but stuck with Firefox because they simply couldn’t browse normally with their choice of extensions.

I on the other hand, have switched to Chrome as my default browser for it does a very good job of browsing the web without taking too much system resources that slow down my machine, which is what I really want in a browser.

However, there’s still great hope because the Chrome team are hard at work in bringing extensions-support to Chrome. When this happens, things will certainly look interesting in the browser wars.

What do you think of the Chrome Shorts? Do you already have a favorite clip?

Via paidContent.org

Datablitz website tagged as malware host by Google Chrome

jhay — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:43:26 +0000

Could this be an “aftershock” of the human error at Google which tagged every site in the Internet as malware last January 31, 2009? Upon visiting Datablitz’ website (http://www.datablitz.com.ph) a few minutes ago, it was tagged by Google as a site that could harm my computer for it allegedly hosts some malware. Check the screen shot I took below:

Datablitz site tagged as malware

I used Google Chrome because it’s my default browser, checked the same site using Firefox and no warnings appeared. Does that mean that Firefox uses a different process and reference to tell whether a website is dangerous for visitors or not?

Have you experienced the same thing using Google Chrome?

Mozilla Survey – What have we done wrong?

jhay — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:43:09 +0000

This is officially the last week of the 1st semester, Finals exams are up next week, good luck to all students out there because one more big challenge and it’s a much deserved semester break is next. It means more time for me to spend online blogging and blog-hopping.

Moving on, I just answered the Mozilla Survey as share by Yuga. The questions are quite interesting but over all they give me the following impressions:

Mozilla is preparing something big or just something in the back burners – Firefox 3 has scored a Guinness world record and the latest upgrade to it was just released it would seem that Firefox is doing well. Perhaps a big marketing blitz to promote Firefox is on the drawing boards.

They really want to know the mind-set or preferences of Firefox users today – most questions dwell on technical stuff like tabs, anti-phising features, browser speed etc. It’s like they’re asking us which features do we really, really want in a browser nowadays.

Asking us for help – Some of the questions made me feel a bit guilty about making Google Chrome (there I’ve said the magic words!) my de facto web browser. I recall how I use to be a proud promoter of Firefox to my friends and online now it has all slowed down the moment Google Chrome landed on my laptop.

Lastly, here’s the clincher:

Is there anything Mozilla should either start — or stop — doing to drive greater awareness, education, word-of-mouth or press in your market?

My answer was simple,

Do a more proactive marketing campaign, like those “I am Mac” ads or something. Stop relying on a third-party to do this for them because good relationships could suddenly end and turn ugly. Right Google?

Anyone else who took the survey too? What are your thoughts about it?

Google Chrome – first impressions

jhay — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:32:17 +0000

I am impressed. Right now, no other browser is running on my laptop except for this shiny new one from Google, which is Google Chrome.

Download and installation was a breeze and in minutes, I was able to import my bookmarks, browsing history and other data from Firefox into Google Chrome and I just love every time I open a new tab. The installer immediately detected my local settings and loaded the installer wizard and Google Chrome itself using the Filipino (Tagalog) language. It was cool for a few minutes but I switched to the English language before setting down to write this initial impression post.

Big big props to the guys behind Google Chrome. Again, I’m totally impressed. It does load pages faster than Firefox and Safari. Don’t ask me about Internet Explorer because I haven’t used it for almost two years now. As of now, I haven’t checked how much memory and other system resources Google Chrome is using, but as I write this, four instances are open each with at least three tabs showing the sites I frequently visit. So far, everything is running smooth and fast. I’ll leave the benchmark tests to the ones who really know how to do it.

The look and feel is clean, sleek, refreshing it gives me the feeling that I’m using Safari. Though the absence of a menu bar and other tool bars on top of the window is a bit disorienting and kinda reminds me of how IE 7 looks. However, it gives me lot more space for viewing web pages and minimizes the distractions brought on by bookmarklets and buttons. I’ve yet to figure out how to put back the del.icio.us and StumbleUpon bookmarks on the bookmarks bar. Making the Google Toolbar work with Chorme is another question. But this is just day one of my Google Chrome experience.

The things I immediately miss are the wonderful core of plugins and add-ons that has made me love Firefox. This review is being done right off the bat so I suppose these questions would be answered in the following days of finding out more on what Google Chrome could really do for me.

With that said, I give a fair warning that Google Chrome may steal my heart away from Firefox and make me forget about Safari.

I’m excited to read about what other bloggers would say about Google Chrome. It’s sure though, that like me, many would be impressed as well.