Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

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re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

ryan mcl — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:38:28 GMT

as a firefox user i've installed chrome to see what its all about

things i like: clean interface, intuitive, "incognito" mode

still like firefox for their addons (adblock plus - haven't seen this many ads in ages!) but inevitably im sure chrome will make its way onto peoples computers along with google desktop, google toolbar, google homepage, google earth, gmail, google video, google scholar...

what next?

re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

Will Callaghan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:21:07 GMT

I dunno about Firefox users - the maverick status is important but I think they're much more about what works.

There's been a lot of seemingly justifiable bleating about recent versions of Firefox. At the last place I consulted one of the favourite topics of conversation was "why FF has suddenly got so rubbish". A lot of these folks are big fans of GMail too so there's some respect there.

More important I think is what are we all going to do about Google? The main plank of their revenue is AdWords and I'm at a loss to understand why one of the UK's local newspaper networks don't build something simpler and offer CPC ads targetted across their pages.

Let clients top up in £10 increments, give them easy controls over targetting, allow them upload pics and videos of their offering and charge for clicks. The This Is network, say, surely has enough traffic to make this viable and there's still marketing muscle within the newspapers it owns.

Instead you get pages like this one:

classifieds.thisisnottingham.co.uk/.../default.aspx

Or an alliance of the magazine groups? Is anyone listening?

re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

Alastair Bevan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:40:02 GMT

Agree with much of the above, but Firefoxers are rebels by nature. They didn't flee the evil empire just to buy into another one. Chrome's new users will be pretty regular, non-expert web users - those who liked Google for its simplicity, and figure that Chrome will be equally idiot-proof.

On the subject of Google's now burgeoning power and influence, an undoubted twitchiness is developing amongst even non-paranoiacs. Google know it, and they want to head off suspicion.

Consequently, they've spun Chrome very ambitiously. They're not bragging, they're bleating - trying to kid us that one of the most aggressive moves in recent web history (hitting Microsoft right in the soft bits) is in fact a defensive gesture.

Defensive? My @rse.

re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

Gordon Macmillan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:37:44 GMT

Yes its the pluggins that do it, I just added a flash blocker, great for getting rid of all those unwanted flash movies.

re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

Will Callaghan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:00:13 GMT

The beauty of Firefox is all the plugins - I find more useful tools every day. When Crome has these FF support is likely to dwindle.

Maybe I'm just being a paranoid android (or even andriod Gordon!) when I fret about Google taking over the entire world. First search, then mail, site stats, online classifieds and now Google AdManager. OK so all the products are innovative and, for the most part, well executed but so much power in one co's hands is a worry.

The big question for me is - what is the UK digital industry going to do about all these innovations?

And what's the local newspaper industry going to do when Google Local and others swipe their classified ads life support?

re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

Gordon Macmillan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:33:28 GMT

Have to hand it to Google for Gmail, I am stil a big fan. Very simple lots of space even if of late it keeps going up and down - could just be me.

re: Chrome is going to be one of those ironies

Sarah Vernon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:02:24 GMT

The main advantage of Firefox for me, over any other browsers, is that it remembers what tabs you've been looking at and will load them for you when you next open it. Sooo useful, especially if your computer crashes.

But I'll be downloading Chrome, mostly out of curiosity, and if it's anything like gmail, I'm pretty sure I'll be hooked. I think the reason that Google do so well is because they are very good at working out what people want from the internet. Before gmail, everyone used hotmail and battled regularly with full inboxes and lack of memory. Not to mention huge amounts of spam. Google launched gmail with its practically unlimited memory space and heightened spam filters and loads of frustrated hotmail users jumped ship, me included. I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome is a roaring success - but I think your prediction of Firefox being crushed in the process is probably pretty accurate. Shame. :(