Google Chrome Not So Shiny

In case you missed it, Google launched an open browser called Chrome based on WebKit (the underlying technology in the Safari browser for Apple Macs). If you did, where have you been Sciencetext had the news and the link on Labor Day!

Chrome is fast and furious, but it’s not quite so shiny (at the moment) as some of us hoped it would be, but then it is only beta. For instance, Google Chrome currently doesn’t support browser extensions (it does support plug-ins, such as Flash), which means for any Firefox NoScript fans, the ads are back! And speaking of Mac and Linux for that matter, Chrome is also currently available only to Windows Xp and Vista users.

If you’re a keen Facebook user, you may have noticed some issues with Ajax and Javascript on some 3rd-party applications. If you’re a Seamonkey fan then you will be disappointed that Chrome does not have integrated email, but then Google does it’s own strand of webmail servicing so perhaps that’s not a surprise.

More worryingly, some password storage facilities require the kind of functionality available only in Firefox, engtech for instance cannot login to any of his sites using Password Hasher because it doesn’t work in Chrome.

An important feature missing from Chrome for anyone who likes to keep up with newsfeeds, is that there doesn’t seem to be any autodiscovery. Of course, Google Reader will register feeds, but Chrome apparently doesn’t spot the meta tags to make the subscribe process slick as we’ve come to expect from other modern browsers.

ChemSpiderMan (aka my good friend Tony Williams at Chemspider.com) is also hoping that applets will be enabled soon in Chrome as the structure drawing applet and the spectral display applets for his service both fail to load. Like I said Chrome doesn’t yet do scripts.

Then there’s Incognito mode, you know the one they’re calling the pr0n browsing tab. Fine for all those adults out there who don’t want to leave their browsing tracks exposed, but what about parents who want to keep an eye on their little darlings’ browser history folder? Well, tough, I cannot find a way to disable the Incognito tab, so you should learn to trust them a little more, or set up adult filtering using OpenDNS to block the seedier side of the net.

Oh, and then there’s the End User License Agreement (EULA), which originally said (Network Security Blog) that Google can do anything it wants with anything you “create” in Chrome, which could mean it could play with your emails, the blog posts you create, anything. They were forced to change because of the massive outrage this called. So, now it reads: You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. Too right!

Finally, it was inevitable that within days of release a security vulnerability was spotted. The first was seen by Kaspersky’s Aviv Raff who explain that mashing up a donkey (Safari) and a horse (Firefox) you get a shiny mule – Chrome. Seriously, though, he has spotted a phishing type flaw in Apple Safari (WebKit) and a Java bug discussed at this year’s Black Hat conference that could be used to trick users into launching a program from within the browser.