Public Service Announcement

[kingandy]

Why you need Google Chrome in your life

EDITED TO ADD: I'm liking it so far, though this "each tab as a separate process" business does seem to make your hard disk a bit choppy when you're opening and closing a lot of them.

Comments

[marcushill.livejournal.com]

Because they got Scott McCloud to do their promo comic?

[kingandy]

Why would that affect the choppiness of my hard disk?

[samharber.livejournal.com]

From the T&Cs

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.

[kingandy]

Those are the standard Google terms and conditions and are probably intended to cover things like Picasa, where you actually post content to their servers.

As pertains to a web browser ... well, yes, if you put things on the Internets, everyone in the world can see them and Google will index and store them for later reference, so no change there then. Personally I'm more concerned that this clause remains in the GoogleMail T&C's...

Further:

[kingandy]

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_google_have_rights_to_all.php

"As we state in our terms of service, we don't claim ownership or control over your content in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, whether you're using it as an individual or through Google Apps. Read in its entirety, the sentence from our terms of service excerpted in the blog ensures that, for documents you expressly choose to share with others, we have the proper license to display those documents to the selected users and format documents properly for different displays. To be clear, Google will not use your documents beyond the scope that you and you alone control. Your fantasy football spreadsheets are not going to end up shared with the world unless you want them to be."

Re: Further:

[samharber.livejournal.com]

But they still leave it in the T&Cs.

Fortunately, as it's open source, someone will soon kludge together a new version that doesn't have that bit in.

[arwel.livejournal.com]

Part of the Google T&C for all its services I think, gmail certainly has that bit.

[samharber.livejournal.com]

It is, and it's just appallingly lazy of them to not take it out/write appropriate T&Cs.

The problem I have is that I have to agree to that to use the browser, which otherwise is very nice.

I'll be sticking with Firefox and NoScript for the time being.

[kingandy]

I think the problem is probably in the gloriously ambiguous "submitting, posting or displaying the content" ... technically you're giving them permission to use anything you view in the browser.

Fundamentally, the intent of the paragraph is basically "If you ask us to show people your shit, you are giving us permission to show people your shit." Which is pretty self-evident, really, but apparently has to be stated explicitly.

Re: Further:

[paulgregory.livejournal.com]

Indeed, they leave it in the T&Cs so I can't sue them for using my avatar in a screen shot, and makes more sense in the context of US law. Frankly I feel happier using the build from Google - T&Cs and all - than one cobbled together by someone else who doesn't clarify what can happen with my data.

[arwel.livejournal.com]

*shrug* Doesn't worry me one bit. I've not looked at the code yet, but I doubt there'll be anything there that makes it possible for Google to actually steal your stuff. I suppose they could do it through the back end with some google analytics, see what browser posted stuff then have their bots go off and collect it, but I won't be loosing any sleep about that.

The reason I won't be using Chrome for a while are more practical, it's lack of AdBlock, RSS feed addition, google bookmarks integration and middle mouse button scrolling.

[ed-fortune.livejournal.com]

If it was vitally important, it would go to court.

The UK judges would love to pounce on an issue like this, and I doubt it'd go in Googles favour, regardless of how many lawyers they have.

[kingandy]

Oddly, I've never used FireFox's RSS aggregation facility for probably the same reason you use Google Bookmarks - I want my reader to remember what I've read wherever I am. Thus I use Google Reader.

I strongly suspect Google Bookmarks integration will be high on the list for the Google Chrome developers...

Now what's this about middle mouse button scrolling? That seems to be a Windows-native thing these days, unless you're talking about something that I've not thought of...

[arwel.livejournal.com]

I use Google Reader too, but I like the add RSS feed button in the address bar that tells me there's a feed and lets lets me add it to Reader. Boolmarks needs an update really, and you'd imagine they'd make the new home page thing portable with it too.

As to the scroll thing, hold down the middle button then move the mouse to scroll up and down. Beats dragging the wheel uo and down.

[kingandy]

Oh that one. I have to admit I had assumed that was supplied by the OS too^[1] (since IE does it as well).

Incidentally, did you know you don't actually have to hold the button down? Just click and move the mouse...

[1] Not to be confused with O/S2

[arwel.livejournal.com]

Clicking, moving, then clicking again feels less natural to me than holding the button down then letting go when I'm done.

[samharber.livejournal.com]

Well the T&Cs issue has been resolved now.

All it needs now is AdBlock and NoScript

[kingandy]

If you believe the blurb, Chrome's built-anew-from-the-ground-up JavaScript is designed to be safe already and completely forbids popups. And inline advertising has never particularly bothered me.

[samharber.livejournal.com]

Whereas it irritates the nipples off me. Especially the ads that float about over the page.

[kingandy]

I did say "inline".