Sawed Off

Google has released its own browser called Chrome.

http://www.google.com/chrome

So far it's pretty cool, the interface is very clean and simple but it's weird not having a menu bar at the top of your window. Seems to run really fast on my computer, faster than Mozilla does. I also like the fact that your home page is a list of your most visited web sites.

Checked it out a bit yesterday. There's some scariness in the eula that we're looking into right now.

Your words are foreign to me Kronosx.

Been using it today and enjoy it, does seem very fast.

You know how Google uses your cookies (when you sign in) to track where you go and give you more targeted advertising? They have the ability to do the same with this browser. So there are people concerned it's a bit too snoopy.

Hmm, didn't even think about the privacy aspect of it. Oh well, if they plan on making this widely used they better not be pulling any weird shit. Let me know what you guys find out.

GMail has the same issues and no one's too upset about that any more. People were OUTRAGED that GMail's ads were based on the contents of your e-mail originally.

I don't necessarily think it's bad and I don't know that we'll explicitly block it from using our apps but we may not support it. It's still new and requires minds far more versed in legalese than mine to decide.

Given the rather public concern that's been expressed about this, I would not be surprised to see a far less worrisome EULA appear in the near future. Google wants people to embrace their new baby, and scaring potential users off is not the way to do that.

They've already agreed (Google) to change the EULA. The scary parts in question was in Section 11, which (at the time of this writing) gave Google a world-wide, non-revocable license to any and all content created, edited or (this is the scariest bit) displayed in the browser.

Truth of the matter was that the team that whipped up Chrome just grabbed the standard EULA boilerplate and didn't have it vetted. No maliciousness intended. The interesting part of this was how quickly they got free legal advice from the community at large. As a nerd-herder (software pointy haired boss) I'm interested in ways that reduce manpower requirements, and there has been a distinct movement recently to having real users be the beta testers for your products (as opposed to paying a big QA group). Maybe now with this development I can find a way to scuttle the legal department...

Guess what industry this users as beta testers movement came from. Go ahead. I'll wait.

I try that model by posting our stories on the Web site before it hits the newspaper. Some readers are happy to serve as copy editors -- especially when their input results in a noticeably better story in the paper -- but it really pisses some users off.

Unfortunately, we can't afford any paid copy editors, so this is as good as it gets for us.

Ringo Flinthammer wrote:I try that model by posting our stories on the Web site before it hits the newspaper. Some readers are happy to serve as copy editors -- especially when their input results in a noticeably better story in the paper -- but it really pisses some users off.

Unfortunately, we can't afford any paid copy editors, so this is as good as it gets for us.

Love it! Mind if I tell this story tomorrow in my monthly software project management roundtable?

You bet. I write pretty clean copy as-is, but anything that's not right gets spotted pretty fast, and people ask good follow-up questions that I have often time to answer before the final version of the story goes in the paper.

Ringo Flinthammer wrote:You bet. I write pretty clean copy as-is, but anything that's not right gets spotted pretty fast, and people ask good follow-up questions that I have often time to answer before the final version of the story goes in the paper.

That second part is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I promise to split the royalties from the discussion 50/50 with you.