Big brother is watching you, but it's only in case you fall off your bike! (Google Chrome)

Member Name: edinburgher

Product:	Google Chrome
Date:	05/04/09 (259 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Super fast browsing, predictive search and nifty features

Disadvantages: Some security concerns may arise, although I'm still sleeping fine

*Bloatware makes me cry*

Of late I've been becoming less and less impressed with the fantastic range of bloatware that Microsoft is determined to shove down the collective throat of computer users worldwide. By this I'm referring to programs that are needlessly complicated to the detriment of the user, take gargantuan amounts of space to install, need updated every few days and generally make life harder.

I've switched to an open source office suite and after the sheer disdain I felt for the new version of Internet Explorer (IE), I bit the bullet and decided to opt for Google Chrome (GC), the new kid on the browser block.

As well as offering the sort of search functionality that unites nerds and those completely new to the world of computing in praise, Google are never far from the press with their innovative range of technologies that are helping to make the Internet that little bit more navigable. While some ideas (such as Street View) have led to complaint and short lived outrage from certain sections of the community, I'd be hard pressed to come up with a more energetic, successful and business savvy example of everything that was right about the tech boom.

The company behind the most popular search engine in the world *needs* their own browser and the addition to their product range seems to be a very natural fit. After all, they know more about browsing behaviour than perhaps any other company in the world (more on this later!)

*Beta no more*

GC has now been launched as a fully functional product and many of the teething problems of the beta release have been ironed out - including the horrendous clause that had originally been inserted that laid claim to the intellectual content of users. I have no idea why they thought that was worth adding to the terms and conditions..

Like any new product, it seems likely that GC will need several updates as and when flaws are found in the source code. Unlike say, Microsoft, Google have a very good reputation for productivity and I'm confident that patches will come out within a reasonable timeframe.

*Free and fast*

I download GC on Friday and have to say that I was immediately stunned by the speed with which pages loaded. It's like comparing a horse to a racing car in the speed stakes moving from IE to this and in a lot of ways I feel like I have a new laptop! Most of what I use it for is online and the difference is really that pronounced.

A lot of this speed is achieved from intelligent use of cached files, built in management of the cookies used to track website usage and predictions made by the browser based upon both my usage habits and those of others. It was completely free and is another example of why Google is a very socially acceptable company to mention (unless you're friends with librarians).

*Who are you and why should I give a damn?*

Most important to me is the incredible range of small features within the browser that make me think things such as 'why didn't someone else think of that?' or 'this is how all browsers should work!' Some of these include:

1. 'One box for everything' - Instead of using your address bar to go to a search engine and then carry out a search, you can type searches directly into the address bar at the top of the page and the search is carried out at source.

2. 'New tab page' - When you open a new tab with GC, it shows small shots of your nine most frequently visited pages, allowing you to jump straight to them. In addition to this, there are a selection of other nice tricks to be considered. Tabs can be dragged into the order you like and you can pull them off the main browser window into their own window. GC treats each tab as a distinct process (unlike most other browsers), meaning that if one of them crashes you can keep the others and close down the offending tab. With IE the whole program crashed and it was not uncommon to lose forms half way through ordering things, or seeing your latest blog post vanish before your eyes.

3. 'Application shortcuts' - Like the 'One box for everything' idea, GC lets you save shortcuts to your favourite websites that require a login, allowing you to bypass finding the site in the first place. For an example, I have a shortcut that takes me straight to Hotmail, remembers my user name (but not my password) and generally makes things speedy. Not a huge change I know, but it makes my life easier. I've also got these shortcuts set up for Dooyoo and a selection of other sites that I used on a regular basis.

4. 'Incognito mode' - Allows you to browse without your computer without storing any trace in your temporary files of what you've been looking at. Perfect for hiding what you've bought a loved one for their birthday, or if you're looking at more adult content on a computer that might be used by anyone younger! While I'm not advocating looking at anything that you won't be happy for everyone to see, the fact is a lot of people do and you may as well act like a responsible adult and protect any impressionable minds that might be at risk.

5. 'Importing shortcuts' - GC took all of thirty seconds to transfer over my bookmarks from IE and didn't miss a single one. A small feature, but the ease with which it did it was impressive.

6. Automatic spell checking - GC is perfect for regular Dooyoo users, as it has a resident spell checker that points out mistakes as you type onto websites. Never again do you have the excuse to submit a review full of bizarre mistakes and words that don't even exist...

*Big brother is watching you, but it's only in case you fall off your bike*

Britain is the most surveilled country in the world. In 2007, the BBC reported that we are watched by a network of over 4.2 million CCTV cameras. Civil liberties groups got very upset, a lot of people wrote indignant articles in the press and MPs were complained to liberally. Yes - people have a right to privacy - but I can think of a lot more positives to CCTV than negatives. Violent criminals arrested, frauds detected and disasters averted. Perhaps an overly simplistic view, but some attention paid can be a good thing.

Much the same with GC:

Early on, a lot of Internet commentators cottoned on to the fact that usage data was being stored by Google along with the IP addresses of computer users (a generated online address that can pinpoint your physical location). Google admit to this and the fact that usage data is being used to help direct your searches, suggest ways to get around errors and probably to help sell you products at some stage.

Google is a business and why on earth wouldn't they try to make money from a fantastic free product that greatly enriches your browsing experience?

I get a little tired of the uninformed voices in the UK that expect something for nothing, get a great finished product that does exactly what they want and then moan about a range of hypochondriac conspiracy theories as to what is happening to their information! I think perhaps it's time that we the Internet using public 'get over ourselves'. Most of what we do online is pretty common and I for one don't have anything that I desperately need to hide.

So, as with the CCTV, Google are paying attention to what we're doing (well, 2% of it) and this is helping to speed up searches, suggest improvements to our search terms and generally enrich things for everyone. Have you seen the new suggested terms that pop up while using the Google search engine? I strongly suspect that they wouldn't be so eerily reliable if it wasn't for GC.

Every business tracks your behaviour and habits in some way, from Dooyoo, to Myspace, your supermarket and your mobile 'phone provider. It's about time we stopped whining on about the erosion of our civil liberties when, to the people providing the service, it's just business.

*Other security concerns and a small complaint*

It seems reasonable to suspect that a range of malware programmers, overly-intelligent hackers and criminal gangs will try and find flaws in GC to steal some of your details. In fact, it's exactly because it would be so easy to let this browser run your entire Internet 'life' that this seems more likely. Please remember, however, that these people need some entry point to your accounts to start stealing your data and worse.

Common sense will help a great deal. Don't click on dodgy looking links, don't open anything that appears to run as a program that you can't trust explicitly and don't answer e-mails from your bank that ask for your passwords etc.

GC is fairly well behaved in that it won't ask to remember passwords for most banking sites that require more than one set of login details (it certainly hasn't done so for me). In addition to this, it will flash up some pretty noticeable warnings if your on a dodgy looking site. Again, haven't had a chance to test this one!

I do have one complaint to make about the browser, relating to the download manager. When you download a file in IE, this opens as a small folder on your bottom taskbar and sits there until it is finished downloading. GC works slightly differently and all the details of the file being downloaded pop up in the browser window itself, making it very easy to keep track of what's happening. The files being downloaded sit in a downloads folder 'within' the browser and can then be easily dragged to your desktop once they've arrived. My only concern is that when you drag a file to the desktop (say an executable file to install a new program), it still sits in the downloads folder. In theory, this means you could end up with two of everything that you download and it seems as if a regular purge of the downloads folder is called for.

Summary: Google Chrome has improved my browsing experience so much it's like having a new computre

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