People Gave Chrome A Shot, But They're Going Back To Their Original Browser
from the no-reason-to-switch dept
As we had mentioned, the original numbers that were coming out about people switching to Google's Chrome browser seemed a little difficult to believe. And, in fact, it appears they were. New reports are suggesting that while a bunch of folks may have kicked the tires on Chrome, the shine came off pretty quickly, and plenty of people have simply gone back to their original browsers. This really shouldn't be a surprise. While some people found Chrome to be clean and relatively fast, it didn't really offer much beyond that. That doesn't mean that it won't eventually make inroads into the market, but simply throwing up yet another browser with the Google brand on it isn't enough to convince people to switch. It needs to actually offer a significant and noticeable difference -- and so far that hasn't happened.
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functional core
C'mon, Mike. I don't think anybody was seriously expecting this to be the wonderwidget to replace all others. This is the very first release, under Google's famous "Beta" program. I expected this was nothing more than a testbed release - make sure the basics work, and then pretty it up.
No, it's not polished or complete, but taken for what it is, first pass and bare bones, it's fantastic.
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It's perfect...
If you think about it, Firefox isn't really used as a browser by most people. With it's myriad of extensions, it's more like a suite of web applications that also browses the interweb. There really are people who just want to browse and not have mouse gestures and all of the other propeller-head gimmicks and webby tools.
In my parents' house, Chrome is gold!
For myself, when i just want to quickly check mail and quickly glance thru my iGoogle pages, my choice is Chrome as well.
I still love Firefox, but I'm not a slave to it. I will use whatever is the easiest and simplest to accomplish whatever task I have at hand.
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Chrome
For beta, I think it is great.
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yup
But I'm not holding my breath for a non-beta version. You know how Google is.
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Uninstalled the first day...
Opening a new tab to be taken to the same thing opera has had for quite a while was a hassle, I want a home button and there simply wasn't one there and no way to easily add it.
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Re: Uninstalled the first day...
Though, i don't recall if the bookmarks toolbar was shown by default...
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Love it
I use Explorer Firefox and now Chrome every day. different reasons for each. But I'm using chrome more and more. The most recently opened pages homepage is great.
------------------------------------------------------------
overused Mike expressions that appeared in this post:
"As we had mentioned"
"This really shouldn't be a surprise"
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I agree that it is a good choice for people who want simplicity. "It just works" isn't a bad standard for any product.
The first thing I did with Chrome was to open googleDocs because that is what I think it was really intended to do. That was something of a disappointment, but it has gotten better since the first release.
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Oh and the number 1 reason I scrapped chrome was IT DOESN'T WORK WITH THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR which I absolutely love and can't live without.
I'm sure it will get there, but for now Chrome is not ready for prime time.
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Re: Uninstalled the first day...
I like Chrome myself, but the flash player in it is a little odd. Some YouTube videos play for two seconds then freeze, while on Firefox, they play normally. Aside from that little bump in the road, I love it.
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Home button
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virus
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Re: Uninstalled the first day...
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Toolbar, Home, ??
Mine does not show a home button to the left of the address bar. To the left of mine is refresh and then to the left of that is arrows.
you can see a picture here:
http://www.aleeya.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/chrome-aleeyanet2.jpg
Maybe it is not enabled by default, but I don't care, I LIKE it this way. I prefer the 'home' that shows up when I open a new tab anyway - my recent history on the screen.
as for one of the anon cowards..
"Oh and the number 1 reason I scrapped chrome was IT DOESN'T WORK WITH THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR which I absolutely love and can't live without."
umm the address bar is also the google toolbar?? you can search by entering your keywords in the address bar??
I am used to the toolbar from google on my firefox but i prefer to goto the address bar and type in my search there. In fact, I am so into the habit of doing that when I use IE or FF at work, I try to type in keywords in their address bars sometimes and forget to use the extra google toolbar.
CTRL T still opens a new tab for me.. I have never right or middle clicked to open a new tab. Or, I can click the + sign.
If I middle click on a tab, it closes the tab.
I STILL prefer this over any other browser and will keep using it. I have no need for any other bloat.
For web design, I just made a validate HTML widget that I dragged to my address bar so I just click on Validate HTML and it validates the page through w3c. Quicker than anything else I have used.
The only time it did not show the page correct was when I was working in phpmyadmin .. but that is a moot point for me.
I also like being able to stick it on a thumdrive (yes, like firefox) and using it off that. Small and simple, the way I want. I spend about 16 hours a day on the internet between work and home / webdesign / hobbies. It is perfect for what I use it for.
As long as they don't bloat it up with un-necessary things, I'll continue to use it.
To each his own
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Tried it, went back to Firefox
It works fine, but 2 things made me go back to Firefox.
1 - Doesn't support Google Toolbar (!)
2 - PDFs didn't open in Acrobat automatically. Maybe I could have gotten this working with some fiddling, but considering it doesn't support Google Toolbar ... back to Firefox.
Come on, Google - support your own dogfood already.
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Like it - waiting for add ons
http://www.ie7pro.com/
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Chrome
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Re: functional core
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Re: Uninstalled the first day...
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Re:
Have you been a troll for the entire time you've been online or are you simply feeling needy and want some attention?
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Re: Uninstalled the first day...
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Re: Use Chrome Everyday
I use Chrome mostly, but switch to Firefox when I need Java.
It's staying on my computer for now.
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Very, very fast
Tab handling is excellent
Ability to kill browser tab processes is nice (but the actual process manager should run at a higher priority so you can pull it up when you REALLY need it)
Bookmarking style is great
The bad:
None of the many amazing Firefox plugins are available for it
Weird bugs with forms
Its Flash plugin is about as buggy and slow as I've ever seen - and no Flashblock
I used Chrome for a while and loved it. Fix the list above and I'll use it a lot more.
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They need to polish Chrome
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Never tried it. Never will.
First, they put that stupid auto-fill feature on its homepage as the default. I can't stand auto-fill and having to turn it off every damn time* pisses me off.
Then they announce a browser. WTF, Google? There are already enough browsers out there. Do something more useful, like... well, hell. I guess they're just out of ideas.
Anyway, Firefox is my choice and I don't see any significant reasons to change.
I know change is inevitable but adding too much to a browser no longer makes it a browser. Worse, it makes it more difficult for the stupid users out there to properly set up (think ActiveX here, folks). Why is just a basic program so hard for people to actually develop anymore? Complaints about memory "hoggage", crashing apps, and other issues just seems totally stupid for a program that's main purpose is to surf the web.
Of course, look at cellphones. Less a phone today than a mere 5 years ago.
Technology is getting worse, not better.
*For those out there about to tell me what I don't already know, yes I know cookies will retain my preferences but using Firefox allows me to clean out those cookies (by choice). What you fail to understand is the annoying option is the default, not the option. Understand?
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love it
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Use it and others
At home, though, I'm enjoying Chrome quite a bit, even if it is an extremely early beta. I'll be eagerly watching for FF to pull a lot of Chrome's features as well.
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Google Chrome browser
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Re: Toolbar, Home, ??
umm the address bar is also the google toolbar?? you can search by entering your keywords in the address bar??
Ah. You seem to misunderstand, let me clarify. The address bar doubles as Google Search but the google toolbar does quite a bit more than that, like highlighting search terms in the resulting documents, news button, blog-this button, GOOGLE BOOKMARKS, autolinking addresses to maps, so on and so forth.
It's not just search. I can search anywhere. It's the other stuff that continues to make Google valuable to me.
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Re: Home button
http://flickr.com/photos/21330122@N02/2887313219/
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Re: Re: Uninstalled the first day...
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What is the deal with incognito?
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Other than that, I use it to connect to the Outlook web mail for my work, Way faster than IE.
Chrome is new, its got querks, I report problems and they eventually get fixed.
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Chrome works and survives though Windows dies a horrible BSOD crash
Chrome was "the only man standing", and continued to work flawlessly while Microsoft XP Pro Windows Explorer and the backup program (Microsoft DOS XCopy), and even Microsoft Task Manager crashed all around it, became unstable, and inoperative. I was very impressed at Chrome's integrity, as I continued to browse and open and close Chrome windows/tabs/sessions (they are apparently mixed, as some tabs appear to share memory sessions with each other). I continued to browse for hours using Chrome to successfully do my business work, even though the computer in which Chrome was running was completely crashed.
Upon reboot, I got an unresolvable blue screen of death, by the way, the Microsoft crash in which Chrome uniquely stood tall and functional was that bad. I am now very very confident that what we have all been asking Microsoft to do - build a reliable operating system, a quick, neat, clean, simple, RELIABLE operating system - is possible, very possible. My experience of Chrome proves it's possible, for me.
Oh, yes, Chrome crashes for me daily, usually after downloading ZIP files and trying to open them from within Chrome's download file status bar. So, instead, I close Chrome's download file status bar, and open the file using Microsoft XP Pro Windows Explorer. After each Chrome crash, it immediately re-opened into the previous tabs and had saved all my typing that I had entered into web pages but had not completed and sent yet. Amazing! Nothing lost.
Chrome stands when Microsoft falls, and stands up again even when Microsoft finds a way to momentarily pull Chrome down. Chrome protects my data and gives me access to my data long after Microsoft has given up and shut down and locked me out.
We have a winner, and the winner is Google.
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Chrome may be missing features, but not benefits!
Opening a new tab to be taken to the same thing opera has had for quite a while was a hassle, I want a home button and there simply wasn't one there and no way to easily add it..."
Yes, I found a was missing familiar features, presuming the benefits of those features could not be gotten any other way. I was as wrong as you are wrong!
For instance, I missed not being able to continue to build my encyclopedic hierarchy of bookmarks. Then I found that if I type what I am looking for into the address field, Google helps me find it faster than I could have found it in my arcane bookmark system anyway. The address fiels also behaves as Google search field - clever! One down.
Home page? Google remembers previous pages if you want, so why not close Chrome with your "home" page on screen, so it always opens there next time, or just make your Chrome icon a shortcut to your home page URL so it opens there first? Same same, and then you're getting what you're after without adding another control, a single purpose control, to the dashboard.
Look at our cars. Yes, we have a map box (ne glove compartment!), but do we always ask the map box for permission to go anyplace when we drive? Or do we go most places directly, and use feedback on the road to guide our specific daily trajectory? How many people even have maps in their cars all the time anymore?
I don't need the map's help or permission anymore to go to 99% of my routine destinations. Browser wise, I find that some of my bookmarks were aging anyway, and lead to dead ends where I had to web search to find where it had moved or to find a replacement anyway. So what good was the bookmark after all?
Try right clicking a page - "save as..." appears, so we don't needs a traditional [File],[Save as] pull down menu strip across the top. Google Chrome found another way to provide the benefit without having the constant on-screen feautre of a fime menu bar. And so on. Chrome is smarter than we think.
My point is that the simplicity of Chrome belies it's sophisticated intelligence and capability. C'mon back and explore it a little more, and you'll probably find neater, faster ways to accomplish your goals. As Apple once said, "Think different." It won't hurt!
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Re: Never tried it. Never will.
Versus, from the same poster: "... adding too much to a browser no longer makes it a browser. Worse, it makes it more difficult for the stupid users out there to properly set up (think ActiveX here, folks). Why is just a basic program so hard for people to actually develop anymore? Complaints about memory "hoggage", crashing apps, and other issues just seems totally stupid for a program that's main purpose is to surf the web ..."
I think you just sold yourself on the reason to try Chrome. Unlike Firefox or IE, it's not adding too much, not disrespecting memory, not crashing itself, and, rather painfully obviously, it's "... main purpose is to surf the web ..." - period.
Maybe you should rethink "... Never tried it. Never will ..."
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Chrome
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Chrome is now my default browser
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PDF etc
Crashes during loading of attachments for me at one website
A few sites inoperable. Yes fast, clean, easy.
Bill Gates wasted his millions - the Microsoft design philosophy is such a silly religion we have all wasted so much time with and so many lost opportunities in software development! Crash Vista Crash. Stop treating me like a fool Bill. Good on you Google and thank you Firefox. Gimme a job making software for people!
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IE cookies won't 'enable' after Chrome was de-installed.
Now when she goes to her bank-it yells about cookies being enabled. They are. Either via Tools; Internet Options; Privacy; and then sliding bar for Settings/Select a setting for the Internet Zone. Or the Advanced Privacy Settings; Over automatic cookie handling checked, as well as Always allow session cookies.
I have even gone to the trouble of deinstalling all patches for IE7 and then IE7; reapplied IE7 and its latest patches.
No luck. She is an older woman, so going back to Chrome may not be an option. I might convince her of Firefox. But I'm really curious why this extreme deinstall/reinstall doesn't work, short of a registry hack(?).
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