A Technicians Look at Google Chrome

As I am sure some of you have already heard from various technology sites that Googles own browser called “Google Chrome” has just been released. If you havent got it yet, you can grab it here. I wont go really in depth telling you about all its features and how this will change the browser wars since there are plenty of sites for that, but I will talk about some of the features that relevant to technicians and whether we should start installing this on our clients computers.

Here are some things you need to know about Google Chrome as a computer technician:

Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome:

First of all, I don’t believe that Google Chrome was designed to replace Firefox. Features wise, I think Firefox will beat it for quite some time.

I believe Google is trying to do is what they did when they first launched the Google search engine; to simplify browsing.
For example, Yahoo! was one of the leading search engines in the year 2000 and its front page was packed with information. Google just had a search box.

Now lets compare Google Chrome to Firefox:

See where they are going with this? Less is often more.

I personally love Mozilla Firefox and I have many plugins which help me do my job, its a geeks toy; but for the average joe, too many features and buttons can be confusing. It is the lack of features that I think will make Chrome great.

Process Separation:

In Google Chrome, each tab of the browser runs as a separate process. So if a site causes a tab to hang, it will just close that tab instead of crashing the entire application. Should a tab crash, we have a mini “Task Manager” hidden in Google Chrome that allows us to find and close the tab which is causing the problem. Just right click somewhere on the top blue bar and go to Task Manager:

You can also press the “Stats for nerds” link or type in “about:memory” in the address bar to bring up more information about each process.

Sandboxing:

Instead of relying on the operating systems ability to protect information, Google Chrome will sandbox each process so there are two levels, one is a user mode and other other is sandbox mode. No actions are allowed to work by themselves in the sandbox without the users interaction. This should help stop “drive by” malware installations.

Phishing Protection

Google Chrome will frequently update a blacklist of malicious and infected websites, similar to what Google Toolbar currently provides for Firefox and IE. Again, this should help stop drive-by malware installations.

Incongnito Mode

Google Chrome has a porn “Incongnito mode” where it doesn’t save any of the browsing history or cookies. To access it, press the blank paper button on the upper right hand side of the browser and choose “New incongnito window”. I’m sure you’ll be well liked by the males of the house when you tell them about this feature.

Edit: EULA

Of course, everything isnt perfect about Google Chrome. Their EULA is a nasty one. It says that anything I write though the Google browser (such as this article) becomes the property of Google. There are a few articles going around on the internet about it, there is a simple one here (thanks JmBoyd).

So am I going to install it on my clients computers?

I am not going to install Chrome onto my clients computers just yet. I’m sure hordes of hackers are experimenting with it right now try and hack it now that it has been officially released. As with new operating systems and service packs, hang tight for a few months and let them iron out the bugs. They would have to fix up that EULA too.

Edit:

Google will now be taking out these shady parts out of the EULA. However, the auto-suggest feature still has some privacy concerns.

The way I see it, in a few months time my future clients will use Internet Explorer, us geeks will use Firefox and our less computer literate clients can use Google Chrome.

To discuss it more, we’ve have a healthy discussion going on about Google Chrome in the Technibble forums. Check it out here.