CodeWeavers Brings Chrome Experience to Mac OS X, Linux

While the Google Chrome browser team is hard at work making the browser run natively on non-Windows operating systems, the team at CodeWeavers has already delivered a port of Chromium, the open source browser project spun off from Google's efforts on Chrome, utilizing the WebKit engine, for both Mac OS X and Linux. Now, Mac and Linux aficionados can get the Chrome experience without having to boot up their emulation environments - giving them the same start page, top tab behavior and integrated "omnibar".

If you are a Mac or Linux user, you can find the CodeWeavers' CrossOver Chromium for Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Mandriva and Suse on the product's Web site here.

As with the Chrome install itself, it's a fairly light production. You just have to download the installation file, add the program to your applications folder, and open it like any other browser. The expanded file itself takes just over 130 megabytes of space, but loads very quickly and has no issues running alongside Safari.


Chromium, on Mac OS X, Tracks My Frequently-Visited Sites
The CrossOver Chromium is clearly a port, and not a native Mac OS X app, as the drop-down menus, shortcuts and fonts smack of a typical Windows application. But if you're dying to use Chrome instead of Safari or FireFox, you get all the functionality of Chrome today.


The Chromium Omnibar Suggests Sites Based on My Entry
In my quick testing of the port, it accurately tracked my most-visited sites, it automatically filled the "omnibar" with search results and suggested URLs, and retained the ability to make new tabs along the top, as well as tear them away to make their own windows - all features lauded in the initial Chrome release.

You can get the browser here: http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/.

Google Grinds Out Gears for Safari

I'm still waiting for the day when every Web site and Web application behaves the same, intended, way on every Web browser and operating system. But despite it being more than 15 years since the launch of NCSA Mosaic, and 13 years since the introduction of Java, we're still not there. As a result, just like application developers often have to make the choice to code for Macintosh or Windows, we're seeing Web utilities make their way to Internet Explorer and Firefox before they get to Safari, despite the Mac's recent growth trajectory. Today, one of the laggards, Google Gears, released tools for the Safari browser, 16 months after debuting for other browsers.

At the time of Gears' launch in May of 2007, I frustratingly dismissed it as "Another Utility That Won't Work With Safari". Considering I've managed to go more than a year without Gears on Safari, to be honest, I almost forgot why I would want it in the first place. There's something about being a Mac/Safari user that makes us more hard-headed than the average Web consumer, and I'd already pretty much reached the point where I didn't remember what I could possibly be missing out on.

But with that said, today's announcement on the Google Mac Blog enables us to gain the full functionality of Gears-enabled sites, like Zoho, WordPress and Google Docs offline, in what's our preferred browser.


Google Reader: My First Google Gears/Safari-enabled App
With Google Gears installed, the first thing I've noticed is the new ability to take Google Reader offline. So, in the rare event that I'll be out of range of the Internet, but didn't get a chance to clear my Google Reader list first, I can take my favorite feeds with me. (See: Google Reader: Offline Reading)

Today's announcement also holds a hidden wrinkle - that the tool should be easily customized for any browser using WebKit. Without saying so, that certainly means Gears' integration in the Chrome browser is behind getting those of us using Safari will get some trickle-down help.

Having a Development Platform Doesn't Mean You Stop Competing

When Google's Chrome browser debuted, I openly asked if we ever thought the application would see the light of day on Apple's iTunes App Store, or if Cupertino would keep the door closed, giving Safari a leg up in the new round of browser wars. This weekend, things got clearer, as Apple turned down a tool that could be seen as competing with iTunes. As I had expected, Apple is not going to let the iPhone's development program get in the way of their leading software applications. And you know what? While they could certainly do better to communicate this up front to the development community, they shouldn't have to give competition the keys to the kingdom.

With so much of the Web community's efforts going toward open source programs and open platforms, it's almost become expected that companies are going to stop acting like businesses and start acting like charities. But not all will.

Google's Chrome was launched with promises that its improvements would be given back to the open source community. The browser, which could have come embedded with a load of Google-centric items, actually offers multiple options for search engines, amid some's concern that Google's growing influence in the search and advertising space was making it a monopoly.

In another example, Twitter famously gives its XMPP feed to FriendFeed, a site which many thought could replace the microblogging service outright. They could have instead told FriendFeed to pound sand and get their updates the old-fashioned way, but they didn't, which played a big role in helping FriendFeed grow to the point where it is today.

But neither of these examples typically is how the world works in business. Businesses focused on revenue and profits (which Google Chrome and Twitter aren't yet) don't usually kowtow to the competition and make things easier for them in the name of openness.

While it could be argued that Apple has introduced competition to MobileMe by making it easy to add Yahoo! Mail, GMail and Outlook to the iPhone, we realize they're not fools, and as e-mail access is essential, being flexible has broadly opened the iPhone's opportunity in the business market and with consumers outside of the MobileMe customer list. But there's no real strong reason for Apple to continue this trend and open up to provide iPhone versions of FireFox, Chrome, Opera or Internet Explorer, were Microsoft ever to have a change of plans regarding the Mac platform or the iPhone.

I also wouldn't expect Apple to make room on the iPhone for desktop photo applications that compete with iPhoto, or anything that offers an end-run around AT&T, so long as that business relationship is in place.

And Apple's not the only company to play this way. Jason Goldberg of SocialMedian has mentioned a number of times that he's made no headway in having that service's activity reflected in the aforementioned FriendFeed, which he assumes is due to them being perceived as competition. While I believe it's more likely due to SocialMedian being so new, and the FriendFeed team having other priorities, there's really no reason they should go out of their way to letting a rival service get hooks into its users.

Apple has got to do a better job, in advance, of letting developers know what the limits are for what they can build, and where they need to stop. But this isn't a not-for-profit game. This is business, and it shouldn't be expected that a company's providing developers with the ability to make an application is an open invitation to replace their crown jewels.

Google's Suggest And Search: Never Completely Private

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Recently, I have been thinking about a particular feature of Google Chrome. If you haven’t used Chrome or haven’t been following the news about it, it is a new Web browser from Google. The feature I've been mulling over is its almost-magical location bar. Google calls this the address bar, but it is also called the location bar or URL bar.

Apparently, a dedicated open-source Google project team called Chromium came up with this new address bar technology, and they call it the omnibox.

Omnibox

On its face, the omnibox is a great improvement over the more generic location bars of pretty much every other Web browser out there. It’s a URL input field combined with a Google (or user-defined) search engine front-end, and it throws in several other tricks to boot. In my opinion, the only thing that really comes close is Firefox 3’s optimistically-named awesome bar. This is different than the location bar in Firefox 3, which by default only looks through your bookmarks and history to find matching search results. Google actually uses its vast search database, using a technology called Google Suggest.

Google Suggest

However, it’s not just in Chrome. Firefox also employs Google Suggest in the search input field next to the address bar if your search is set to Google. You can also find it on Google’s classic home page (i.e. not iGoogle), and in Google’s mobile application and site (if javascript is supported). On the surface, Google Suggest is great. Just start typing whatever you are looking for, whether it be a Web site or keyword, and Suggest goes off and tries to predict what you are typing with increasing accuracy. This is especially useful on mobile devices where typing can potentially be annoying.

Privacy Concerns

The one big drawback of this technology is that your search terms are transmitted as you type them to Google’s server. They literally know everything you type, including half-finished search terms that you subsequently erase without submitting. And what if you accidentally had copied a lot of text into your cut-and-paste buffer and dropped that in the address bar? The whole buffer would be in Google’s hands immediately.You can see where this could lead to a potential problem. What if an executive of a giant company started to search for an insider-trading tip just prior to dumping a lot of stock? Could these partial search results be requested by subpoena in a resulting civil trial?

Google’s Promise

Earlier this month, Google did in fact consider this issue and updated what and how much they cache from Google Suggest. You can read the details from the official Google blog here. In summary, they promise:

• 98% of Google Suggest searches are not logged.
• 2% of these searches are logged with IP addresses.
• These 2% will have their logs will be ‘anonymized’ within 24 hours of search result, starting late this month or early next month.

Keep in mind that this promise is specifically for Google Suggest searches. If you actually submit your search query, Google’s standard privacy assurance goes into effect, which you can see explained very simply in this YouTube video. It seems reasonable to believe that Google is putting forth a good faith effort to protect your privacy while balancing the needs of their search business.

Another Dynamic to Consider

Google isn’t giving you the whole picture though. Sure, having a cutting edge search engine is what made them the first name in search. However, their business revenue comes from advertising, not search.How does this affect their high-wire balancing act? Well, it’s not completely clear. However, they didn’t become the first name in Web advertising by not involving search. In fact, search is key to the effectiveness of their advertising business.

The Google banner ads you see in your search result pages, and the Web pages with even more targeted advertising when you click on a link in that result page, this is how Google makes its money.You can safely assume that Google is always feeling pressure from their profit center to hand over as much information as possible on search results to help in making their advertising even more clairvoyant.

Traditionally, Google has been clever and has worked within the very simple dynamic of search terms, geographic locations, and statistical results in order to make this advertising highly targeted. However, their brain trust is gigantic. If you can think of something, anything they could possibly use to help their ad business, they probably are developing it in the lab, or are using it on their site. Local, national and international news at the time of the query. Related geographical searches. Platform search is performed on (Windows, Mac, mobile, etc.). Which query result is chosen. Time between search and click-through. Basically, everything.

Getting Back to Privacy

So how does this affect you? Well, the bottom line is, what you do on Google’s search engine will never be completely private. Like throwing a rock in a pond, the ripples are immediately noticeable and quickly die down, but the waves might not hit the opposite shore for a while. Tiny traces will always be left, and it is those traces Google uses to improve its search, and ultimately its search-based advertising.

The Bottom Line

You do have to make a decision if you want to participate in this giant information machine Google has built behind its sleek minimalist Web site. Some people think Google Suggest is going too far. Some may think that Google Chrome’s Incognito mode will keep them safely anonymous.The answer to both of these is: Not quite.

• Google Suggest does gather more statistical data (such as typing speed, number of corrections, etc) but anonymizes that information quickly.
• Incognito mode only works on the client side, that is to say, it keeps your audit trail off the books on your end. If you use Google to search for something with this mode turned on, they still get all the same info they would get if you weren’t using it.

The only real privacy solution, the only way to remain out of the grand Google experiment, is to not search online at all.

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

Get the Google Chrome Comic Book, Support Two Great Charities

Earlier this week, Google launched their new Web browser, Chrome, in a unique way - explaining what's a very technical product in the most user friendly way they could, by using a comic book. While the Web version of this book has been linked to time and again, print copies of the book are very rare, distributed to those who Google determined were top press targets, both online and off. The Inquisitr's Duncan Riley received one, and rather than put the book on his mantle, he's auctioning off the potential collectors' item for charity, in what has to be seen as a win/win scenario.

You can bid on auction yourself via eBay, and Riley has offered the full proceeds to be split between Beth Kanter and Beyond Blue.


A frame from the Chrome comic
More details can be found on Riley's post on the subject, but he has said he'd be delighted if the two charities could split proceeds greater than $1,000. It's an interesting opportunity to get your hands on a piece of Web history and provide aid to those who need it. And if you're not interested enough to bid up the auction, maybe my own initial bid will stand up. You see... I'm not big enough for Google to have sent me one, so I'm headed to eBay for Duncan's copy. See if you can outbid me here: http://bit.ly/ebaychrome.

What Google Chrome Gets Right

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)

There has already been a lot of coverage of Google’s new browser, Chrome, including on this site (See Here and Here). But I think that it is premature to judge and execute this new product so early in its life cycle, I think time will tell if it becomes a strong contender against Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Therefore, I am not going to dwell on some of Chrome’s more publicized shortcomings. I will instead highlight a few features that Chrome gets right.

Learn About Chrome

Let me begin by pointing out that, true to Google’s “less is better” ethic, their download page is structured simply, with the download link prominent. The only other link, if you feel hesitant about diving in head-first, leads you to more information about the product.

Personally, I like this philosophy behind product presentation. None of the links are redundant, and the path to learning more about the product feels natural. Also, kudos should be given for the Chrome team embracing another new Google product, YouTube, in their presentation of the browser’s features.

First Effort

I think we need to remember that Chrome is Google’s first effort at a browser. Sure, they leveraged the maturity of the WebKit browser engine to give the browsing experience a solid, useful core. But in terms of development time, Chrome is competing against products that have been through at least one major revision, and in the case of IE, seven.

The advantage here is that they could really pick and choose the aims and feature set for their browser. The disadvantage, of course, is that they have to enter the playing field at a really high level, and the feature set they implement has to feel really mature. Even Firefox didn’t have to live up to that sort of scrutiny, since it was snapped up by the Mozilla team and its ‘grassroots’ status gave it a lot of protection as the rough edges were filed away.

Features Worth Noting

When I installed Chrome, the first thing I did is go to the help link. I have to admit that I had seen a mention of a “tab browser” that I wanted to learn how to activate. However, once I was there I really got distracted learning about the other features. I’d like to highlight a few that I think really stand out and are a clear response to what Google believes people would like to have natively in a browser.

Stealth Mode

The first unique feature that caught my eye was something Chrome calls incognito. If you have ever used a ‘mobile’ version of Firefox or Opera, you will get this mode. Basically, when you open an incognito tab, Chrome will not permanently record any of your browsing activity or cookies that are created in that tab. Once the tab is closed, all the cookies and history cached in memory goes away without a trace on your hard drive.

I have long thought that this is a feature that should be a native part of a browser for a while now. Whether I am surfing for a gift (as the Google documentation suggests) or … ahem … other things, I will definitely find this mode useful.

Much has been written about Google only respecting privacy when it benefits them. But this feature proves that they are in fact thinking about our local privacy when using a web browser. And with the rise of browser-based applications in the past year, I think this will become even more important.

Sandbox and Memory Management

One of the features that the Chrome team has taken pains to highlight is the products ability to partition off the memory usage of separate tabs and windows. While not a really flashy or obvious feature, I believe this is a critically important one, again especially as we move more into the browser-as-an-application space.

How many times have you clicked on a link from your email tab or from a browsing session and the flash or java app on the destination page made your entire browser crash? This has happened to me quite a few times, and I know for some people, this sort of situation is a regular occurrence.

With the built-in partitioning Chrome brings to the table, in theory, we may still have issues with certain pages behaving badly, but now this does not necessarily mean all your built-up context in other tabs and windows has to go away. Now, you can simply kill off the misbehaving page and go on with your life.

Management of this feature is through the use of Chrome’s built in task manager, which looks very similar to Windows’ task manager and will give you memory and network bandwidth of all your sessions at-a-glance. You have the ability to kill any tab or window off at any time.

Even cooler, there is a “stats for nerds” link that takes you to about:memory, a browser-generated page that gives you detailed information about the memory usage in each tab or window. This is a great insight into which pages take up the most memory, as well as Chrome’s total memory usage.

Speed

The last detail I would like to note for now is Chrome’s speed. Again, this is not a very flashy feature, as it is something that can only really be experienced through using the product for a while. But this is something that Google designers have been focusing on from the beginning. Chrome opens quickly, tab management is fast and pages render lightning-quick.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, as they say. All freshly-installed browsers behave well and move quickly. However, over time they tend to either slow down, or eat up more and more memory. We’ll see if Chrome lives up to its promise of delivering a consistently speedy and nimble browsing experience.

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

I Spent the Day On Windows, Just to Use Chrome

Some people might think the typical Mac user has a superiority complex, and you could be excused for thinking so, if the Mac vs. PC commercials were any indication. But every once in a while, a cool "must try out" app comes along that leaves us a little envious ourselves - making us feel like we're being considered lesser beings. Today, Google's debut of Chrome, their next generation Web browser, was for Windows only, not for Macs. But putting my better judgement aside, I was willing to fire up VMware Fusion and stay in Google Chrome for the day to give it a fair shake. While it wasn't light-years ahead of anything I've ever tried, I'm glad I spent the time to check it out, and it's going to be fun seeing it get developed and ready for my preferred platform.

I believe the world is moving away from an operating system-based model to that of the Web browser. More essential applications are moving to the browser, and with the exception of Microsoft Office apps and Adobe PhotoShop, I could spend virtually my entire day just in the browser or on e-mail. This does two contradictory things: #1, it makes it easier for people to switch between operating systems, like from PC to Mac, and #2, it makes the differentiation between Macs and PCs less important to begin with, making the tie-ins with Web properties and creative applications like iLife and MobileMe just that much more critical.

When Google finally opened up Chrome to the masses around mid-day today, I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines, so I fired up VMware Fusion, with a Windows XP environment, opened Internet Explorer, and downloaded Chrome. A few minutes later, I had one of the fastest, most minimal browsers out there. While I didn't import any bookmarks or my own user history, it wasn't long before I was using corporate e-mail, and opening new tabs to check all my usual sites, without any issues. Pages loaded quickly, and with the exception of needing to install a Flash plug-in, all the content worked.

Curious if Chrome would be allowed to visit more secure sites, I logged onto Wells Fargo Bank and eTrade and didn't get any issues of the bank not supporting the browser. Interestingly enough, my own SiteMeter account recognized the Chrome visit instead as a variant of Safari (thanks to the underlying WebKit foundation), which likely explained why it was so smooth.


Awwwww.... Snap!
I only encountered one failed tab, which responded with an "Aw, Snap!" with an accompanying unhappy face. But other than that small failure, browsing was quick, and not much different than any other browser. The main differences on the surface had to be seeing my most frequently-visited sites in grid form as I opened new tabs, and seeing the tabs themselves along the top of the browser.


My popular visits (scrubbed for work), seen in Chrome
Pretty much the only complaint I have so far is I don't know how to customize my most "favorite" pages, so I can remove some from the grid, like corporate Web mail or the Intranet. If there's a way, I haven't seen it yet, but it's not a showstopper.

Typically, using an application under Windows emulation on VMware is remarkably slower than its native equivalent. But I didn't feel bogged down by Chrome, as I mentioned on Twitter. It just worked. I even enabled the "Unity" setting so the Chrome browser window floated above all my other Mac apps, and it seemed just right.

Will it be enough to make users turn off Internet Explorer? So far, I'd say not yet. Nothing about the browser made it amazingly better for the unwashed masses who have grown used to accepting Microsoft's half-hearted attempts at software. But I can't see any good reason I'd ever use Firefox or Opera or Flock again. Chrome is going to be my alternative to Safari on Windows and I'm interested to see if they can sway me on the Mac side, hooks and all.

The New World of Browser Choices is All About the Hooks

In a perfect technology world, every Web site and every Web application would perform the same way across all Web browsers, operating systems and mobile devices. But we're not in a perfect world, and Web surfers' experiences are being increasingly determined by browser-specific plug-ins, third party applications and tie-ins with the host operating system. The result makes it less likely that one Web browser user can make a switch, after having invested in one specific application to get a tailored user experience.

Today's big news/rumor is that Google is preparing their own Web browser, called Chrome, which is based on WebKit, the same foundation underlying Apple's Safari browser. While the news hasn't been confirmed by Google outright, all indications make it appear to be true.

(Update: Google has now made it official)

There Are A Lot of Questions About Chrome

With news of Chrome, Web enthusiasts are already asking questions - will it support the GreaseMonkey scripts designed for FireFox? Will it be released for Mac OS X on the same day it's released for Linux and Windows? And, as it's so early, at least the latter question can't be answered. But assuming they are using WebKit, it's unlikely GreaseMonkey scripts could be used out of the box.

Today's Web Browsing Experience Comes Down To:

1. Speed
2. Reliability
3. Compatibility
4. Data Portability
5. Extensibility

It is no longer enough to load the fastest. The time when you could put Internet Explorer and Netscape or Safari and Firefox side by side and show me how quickly they loaded HTML pages or performed JavaScript renders is gone. People just expect the browsers to work. And if they crash even once a day, users are unhappy. So Speed and Reliability are assumed.

Compatibility, for the most part, is a small issue at this point. It's a rare site that says "Please Use Internet Explorer" or "Your Operating System is Not Yet Supported", although that does happen. That's why initial response to Internet Explorer 8, beta 2, was so tepid, as it really did fail the basic expectations. (See Steven Hodson's critique)

That leaves what I see as the most important points going forward: Data portability and extensibility, and the biggest trojan horse I see going forward to impact the browser marketplace is the iPhone.

If Google Announces Chrome, Does Apple Put it In the iTunes App Store?

Apple made a custom, light-weight, version of Safari for the iPhone, which makes their Web browser the default browsing experience for what's the world's most talked-about cell phone. Using Safari on the iPhone makes it more likely that you will use Safari on your Mac or your PC because it can synchronize your bookmarks, and unify your browsing experience. Changing bookmarks on your desktop means they are changed on the iPhone.

Today, there are no alternative Web browsers for the iPhone. No Firefox, no Opera, and definitely, no Internet Explorer. While Google and Apple appear to be friends, and Google makes applications for the iTunes Application Store, and therefore, the iPhone, can you see Apple opening up the option for users to browse in Chrome instead? And even if they did, the likelihood of Chrome's behavior being mirrored to the desktop, via iTunes, is slim.

Apple playing the role of gatekeeper to the iTunes Store will be a bigger deal as the iPhone increases in market share.

Could Mozilla/Firefox Apps Be Re-written for WebKit?

There are scads of great GreaseMonkey scripts designed for some of the social networks I use, including FriendFeed. In addition, the Google Reader overlay, Feedly, only works in Firefox, so as long as I stay in Safari, I don't use the product at all. To date, Safari has badly trailed Firefox and IE in terms of getting add-ons, like browser toolbars and plug-ins, but if Google were to enter the market with another WebKit-based browser, that could shake things up.

So What About the Hooks?

As a Mac user and a MobileMe customer, my e-mail, Web browser bookmarks, and address book are synchronized across my devices, both laptop and iPhone, and the data is available online from any computer, in the cloud. Because of these hooks, I'm not a good candidate to move away from Safari any time soon, and I'm more tied into Apple's infrastructure of E-mail, Address Book, and iCal than ever before.

For others, it's Google who has the hooks. From their Google Calendar to GMail and Picasa, they've trusted Google with their personal data. For these folks, Google will undoubtedly tailor Chrome to their interests, and it would be hard for competitors like Apple and Microsoft to make the interoperability any better. But this, of course, leaves out the iPhone scenario, which leads us to Android, Google's approach to make a next-generation phone operating system, distributed through multiple handset partners.

Now, instead of seeing that a browser is faster, or more pretty, or has more features, it's more important that we can move our data around between devices and that the applications don't hiccup. We may not have seen it at first, but as the major browser vendors start to tie in to the applications you use every day, they're getting more of a hook into you as a customer, and reducing your potential to use an alternative product. Even before we see Google's Chrome in action, I know it will take being lighter, faster, and as reliable, to start, plus featuring the type of hooks that Safari does today, on the iPhone, to make me consider it anything more than a hobby and as a primary browser alternative.

We've come a long way since Microsoft embedded Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system and was deemed a monopolist, but that won't stop the big players from playing favorites with their own applications and giving you reasons to stick around.