Chrome

Google's releasing the not-yet-baked Chrome as 1.0, rather than continuing to develop it as a beta, is the company's biggest blunder yet. It's also a disturbing indication that the company has started to emphasize marketing over technology --- always the first sign of a company in decline.

Google has said that it plans to soon to take Chrome out of beta and release it officially, but it better squash plenty of bugs before it does it. A software testing service has found that Chrome's beta is buggier than both the beta of Firefox 3.1 and Internet Explorer 8, with nearly 300 bugs that need to be fixed.

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She was the new girl in town for a while, but Google Chrome has lost her shine. Sorry Chrome: You've been swell, but I'm going back to my old flame, Firefox.

The browser that was supposed to take over the world seemed to die a painful death. Chrome may be lightening fast, but the browser market only has room for one or two champions.

Web browser features are dandy, but when it comes to raw, screaming speed, Firefox 3.1 beta has just taken first place back from the Chrome beta.

Something went horribly wrong between the alpha of Firefox (called Shiretoko) and the first real Firefox 3.1 beta. I'm not too impressed so far. Compared to Chrome, in testing my most frequently visited sites, Firefox 3.1 lags well behind Chrome. It seems Mozilla has not included beefed up JavaScript V8 support in this release, and it really shows.

I've been speed-testing Google Chrome (build 2200) against the second alpha for Firefox 3.1, called Shiretoko. I'll leave the hardcore benchmarks for other bloggers and those "performance computing" sites, but suffice it to say, I see no discernable difference in speed. There's no radical fast-load benefit when using Chrome, even though that is often heralded as the prime reason to switch browsers.

Last week, Computerworld reported that Chrome's market share has slipped again - now fighting for a fourth spot with the Opera browser. That means IE, Firefox, and Safari are trudging on the fledgling Google browser, which has just a .7 market share, according to Net Applications. I think the browser has now almost become inconsequential, a bright blip that has faded faster than my summer tan.

Chrome is a great choice if you use any of the growing number of Web 2.0 apps in the Googlesphere. Don't think of it as a replacement for IE or Firefox. It's more of a complement.

In a Computerworld report that summarizes recent Net Applications data, interest in Google Chrome has now died down to a standstill. Most of the people still downloading it are either night owls or from countries outside of the US, such as China, because the only activity is at night. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Chrome searches have now fallen in line with Firefox. This, after a week or hype and unforeseen interest made it seem like Google was going to a) take over the browser market b) usher in the end the OS as we know it and c) probably make Google really rich.

Listen, I'm glad that T-Mobile, Google, and HTC have released the Linux-powered Android phone, but who really buys a phone for its operating system??

All credit to CrossOver for its WINE-based version of the hot Chrome Web browser for Linux and Mac OS, but, come on Google, how's about giving us the real thing?

It doesn't take much to make me hate a browser. After using Chrome for an entire week, I found one seemingly innocuous bug that is so annoying and frustrating that I can't even use the product anymore.

Lost in all the hooplah about Chrome's release is a very disturbing fact: The new browser could be Google's greatest privacy invader yet. In fact, Chrome can send back the keystrokes you type into its Address Bar, even if you don't bother to hit Enter. I've got details, along with a fix.