People Gave Chrome A Shot, But They're Going Back To Their Original Browser
from the no-reason-to-switch dept
As we had mentioned, the original numbers that were coming out about people switching to Google’s Chrome browser seemed a little difficult to believe. And, in fact, it appears they were. New reports are suggesting that while a bunch of folks may have kicked the tires on Chrome, the shine came off pretty quickly, and plenty of people have simply gone back to their original browsers. This really shouldn’t be a surprise. While some people found Chrome to be clean and relatively fast, it didn’t really offer much beyond that. That doesn’t mean that it won’t eventually make inroads into the market, but simply throwing up yet another browser with the Google brand on it isn’t enough to convince people to switch. It needs to actually offer a significant and noticeable difference — and so far that hasn’t happened.
Comments on “People Gave Chrome A Shot, But They're Going Back To Their Original Browser”
functional core
C’mon, Mike. I don’t think anybody was seriously expecting this to be the wonderwidget to replace all others. This is the very first release, under Google’s famous “Beta” program. I expected this was nothing more than a testbed release – make sure the basics work, and then pretty it up.
No, it’s not polished or complete, but taken for what it is, first pass and bare bones, it’s fantastic.
Re: functional core
The core was quite functional, but I did not like the way it scanned my hard drive every time I opened it. Google wants to index everything in the world, including, apparently, any media to which it has access. After searching for a way to turn off the scanning and not finding it, I removed Chrome from my computer.
It's perfect...
…for my parents. Seriously! I moved them over to Firefox long ago because of IE’s security and other issues, but now they totally love Chrome. I know Google didn’t plan to build a browser/web app aimed at the silver-haired demographic, but it’s so free of bling and that makes it easy for my parents to focus on what they want. They don’t even understand when I say “just open a browser and look” so the browser wars are completely meaningless to them.
If you think about it, Firefox isn’t really used as a browser by most people. With it’s myriad of extensions, it’s more like a suite of web applications that also browses the interweb. There really are people who just want to browse and not have mouse gestures and all of the other propeller-head gimmicks and webby tools.
In my parents’ house, Chrome is gold!
For myself, when i just want to quickly check mail and quickly glance thru my iGoogle pages, my choice is Chrome as well.
I still love Firefox, but I’m not a slave to it. I will use whatever is the easiest and simplest to accomplish whatever task I have at hand.
Chrome
I’m still using Chrome and I’m going to stay using it. The speed of Chrome is the key. I’m sure other features or widgets will come.
For beta, I think it is great.
yup
Chrome beta. It worked pretty well and i dig the speed; especially quick when loading gpages. And don’t forget incognito; that’s a feature we all need. So this browser will stay on my computer for now.
But I’m not holding my breath for a non-beta version. You know how Google is.
Uninstalled the first day...
Simply because there’s no home button. My iGoogle page is my homepage because it has all of my news,email and weather on it.
Opening a new tab to be taken to the same thing opera has had for quite a while was a hassle, I want a home button and there simply wasn’t one there and no way to easily add it.
Re: Uninstalled the first day...
Wow, just go to the page you want as home – drag the favicon to the left of the url to the bookmarks toolbar and bam.
Though, i don’t recall if the bookmarks toolbar was shown by default…
Re: Uninstalled the first day...
Actually, I’m using Chrome right now, and there IS a home button. For some reason, though, its not enabled by default. Also, another oddity is that you still have to open a new tab- you cant right-click or middle-click it to open a new tab with the home page, like you can in Firefox.
I like Chrome myself, but the flash player in it is a little odd. Some YouTube videos play for two seconds then freeze, while on Firefox, they play normally. Aside from that little bump in the road, I love it.
Re: Uninstalled the first day...
What do you mean that there isn’t a home button. There is one right between the reload and the bookmark star.
Re: Uninstalled the first day...
Yes there is. OPTIONS – BASICS tab – Check “Show home button on toolbar”
Re: Uninstalled the first day...
That’s funny. My version has a home button. You didn’t try to edit your settings.
Re: Re: Uninstalled the first day...
Why should you have to edit your settings to get a home button? That’s a pretty basic piece of functionality.
Love it
The way it integrates the tabs into the window “frame” was enough for me.
I use Explorer Firefox and now Chrome every day. different reasons for each. But I’m using chrome more and more. The most recently opened pages homepage is great.
————————————————————
overused Mike expressions that appeared in this post:
“As we had mentioned”
“This really shouldn’t be a surprise”
Chrome is OK. It is a memory hog if you open a lot of tabs, but that is part of the robustness.
I agree that it is a good choice for people who want simplicity. “It just works” isn’t a bad standard for any product.
The first thing I did with Chrome was to open googleDocs because that is what I think it was really intended to do. That was something of a disappointment, but it has gotten better since the first release.
I don’t think that Chrome or any new browser needs to offer anything outrageously new and different, it justs needs to offer something! After a few days of saying WOW, Google has a browser, I quietly uninstalled it and went back to my favorite browser. For me specifically, I couldn’t use 60% of the web sites and apps I normally do, because Chrome wouldn’t run or render them correctly due to lack of support for activex or adequate java support.
Oh and the number 1 reason I scrapped chrome was IT DOESN’T WORK WITH THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR which I absolutely love and can’t live without.
I’m sure it will get there, but for now Chrome is not ready for prime time.
I’ll switch when Chrome supports Windows 2000. XP was such a minor cosmetic change from 2000 that it should be trivial.
Home button
There *is* a home button in Chrome. It’s the one to the left of the address bar, with the image of a house on it.
Re: Home button
Not seeing it here:
http://flickr.com/photos/21330122@N02/2887313219/
virus
My company’s virus protection program labeled it as a virus and promptly uninstalled it. Someone thought we shouldn’t be using it.
Toolbar, Home, ??
I downloaded it less than 15 minutes after it came out and I have been using it since.
Mine does not show a home button to the left of the address bar. To the left of mine is refresh and then to the left of that is arrows.
you can see a picture here:
http://www.aleeya.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/chrome-aleeyanet2.jpg
Maybe it is not enabled by default, but I don’t care, I LIKE it this way. I prefer the ‘home’ that shows up when I open a new tab anyway – my recent history on the screen.
as for one of the anon cowards..
“Oh and the number 1 reason I scrapped chrome was IT DOESN’T WORK WITH THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR which I absolutely love and can’t live without.”
umm the address bar is also the google toolbar?? you can search by entering your keywords in the address bar??
I am used to the toolbar from google on my firefox but i prefer to goto the address bar and type in my search there. In fact, I am so into the habit of doing that when I use IE or FF at work, I try to type in keywords in their address bars sometimes and forget to use the extra google toolbar.
CTRL T still opens a new tab for me.. I have never right or middle clicked to open a new tab. Or, I can click the + sign.
If I middle click on a tab, it closes the tab.
I STILL prefer this over any other browser and will keep using it. I have no need for any other bloat.
For web design, I just made a validate HTML widget that I dragged to my address bar so I just click on Validate HTML and it validates the page through w3c. Quicker than anything else I have used.
The only time it did not show the page correct was when I was working in phpmyadmin .. but that is a moot point for me.
I also like being able to stick it on a thumdrive (yes, like firefox) and using it off that. Small and simple, the way I want. I spend about 16 hours a day on the internet between work and home / webdesign / hobbies. It is perfect for what I use it for.
As long as they don’t bloat it up with un-necessary things, I’ll continue to use it.
To each his own
Re: Toolbar, Home, ??
umm the address bar is also the google toolbar?? you can search by entering your keywords in the address bar??
Ah. You seem to misunderstand, let me clarify. The address bar doubles as Google Search but the google toolbar does quite a bit more than that, like highlighting search terms in the resulting documents, news button, blog-this button, GOOGLE BOOKMARKS, autolinking addresses to maps, so on and so forth.
It’s not just search. I can search anywhere. It’s the other stuff that continues to make Google valuable to me.
Tried it, went back to Firefox
I tried it.
It works fine, but 2 things made me go back to Firefox.
1 – Doesn’t support Google Toolbar (!)
2 – PDFs didn’t open in Acrobat automatically. Maybe I could have gotten this working with some fiddling, but considering it doesn’t support Google Toolbar … back to Firefox.
Come on, Google – support your own dogfood already.
Like it - waiting for add ons
I’ll use Chrome as my default browser when it gets the add ons I use a lot – mouse gestures, auto refresh, text storage, add blocker, and a few others I’m forgetting. I tried Firefox for a while but switched to IE7 Pro.
http://www.ie7pro.com/
Chrome
I like it and will continue with it.
Looks like you pissed off all of the Chrome fanboys out there, Mike.
Re: Re:
I didn’t read a single comment that had the tone of people being pissed off. People simply stated that they like using it where appropriate for them.
Have you been a troll for the entire time you’ve been online or are you simply feeling needy and want some attention?
Use Chrome Everyday
I alternate Chrome with Firefox. After trying the IE 8 Beta, I don’t have much use for that anymore.
I use Chrome mostly, but switch to Firefox when I need Java.
It’s staying on my computer for now.
The good:
Very, very fast
Tab handling is excellent
Ability to kill browser tab processes is nice (but the actual process manager should run at a higher priority so you can pull it up when you REALLY need it)
Bookmarking style is great
The bad:
None of the many amazing Firefox plugins are available for it
Weird bugs with forms
Its Flash plugin is about as buggy and slow as I’ve ever seen – and no Flashblock
I used Chrome for a while and loved it. Fix the list above and I’ll use it a lot more.
They need to polish Chrome
I tried it. I’d use it, but I’m too used to having Adblock installed on Firefox, and not having to see the flash ads and all those fun bits. When Chrome supports ad-ons, I’ll be back in line to download.
Never tried it. Never will.
Not sure why Google’s turning into this “in your face” company, but I’m not impressed lately.
First, they put that stupid auto-fill feature on its homepage as the default. I can’t stand auto-fill and having to turn it off every damn time* pisses me off.
Then they announce a browser. WTF, Google? There are already enough browsers out there. Do something more useful, like… well, hell. I guess they’re just out of ideas.
Anyway, Firefox is my choice and I don’t see any significant reasons to change.
I know change is inevitable but adding too much to a browser no longer makes it a browser. Worse, it makes it more difficult for the stupid users out there to properly set up (think ActiveX here, folks). Why is just a basic program so hard for people to actually develop anymore? Complaints about memory “hoggage”, crashing apps, and other issues just seems totally stupid for a program that’s main purpose is to surf the web.
Of course, look at cellphones. Less a phone today than a mere 5 years ago.
Technology is getting worse, not better.
*For those out there about to tell me what I don’t already know, yes I know cookies will retain my preferences but using Firefox allows me to clean out those cookies (by choice). What you fail to understand is the annoying option is the default, not the option. Understand?
love it
I switched immediately from firefox (which I used exclusively since its release) and haven’t looked back. and I suspect it will only improve.
I liked it but I basically gave it up due to the reasons Mike mentioned. Firefox gives me everything I need, is fast with a huge amount of plug-ins to choose from. Chrome simply doesn’t offer anything over FF other than being a bit faster.
Use it and others
As Craig (comment #2) pointed out, Firefox really isn’t a browser, but rather a suite of web applications that happens to browse the internet as well. It’s an integral part of my job, and I couldn’t work without it, so no Chrome for me here at work.
At home, though, I’m enjoying Chrome quite a bit, even if it is an extremely early beta. I’ll be eagerly watching for FF to pull a lot of Chrome’s features as well.
I tried it out and it’s super fast. But it lacks all of Firefox’s plug-ins so it’s merely a hollow shell of a browser. Maybe in a few years it’ll be worth switching over to.
Google Chrome browser
Other than very fast loading, I do not see a need for this browser at this time.
I actually like Chrome quite a bit, especially the home site with thumbnails of websites that I recently visited.
What is the deal with incognito?
One thing I can’t figure out about Chrome, and I would honestly appreciate someone explaining to me: how is the famed “incognito mode” that everyone seems to love any different from going to Tools–>Options–>Privacy in Firefox and telling it not to save any of your browser history, search history, cookies, etc.? I refuse to use Chrome because I want to surf “incognito” ALL the time, but Chrome only allows you to do it in that insufferable popout window, and I don’t want to have to remember to hit Ctrl+Shift+N every time want to I sneak a look at BonsaiKitten on my computer at work.
Only problem that I have with Chrome is when I go to a few of my favorite websites that check to see what browser your using, I get the message “The browser your currently using is not recognized, and offers up alternatives such as Internet Explorer or Fire Fox.
Other than that, I use it to connect to the Outlook web mail for my work, Way faster than IE.
Chrome is new, its got querks, I report problems and they eventually get fixed.
Chrome works and survives though Windows dies a horrible BSOD crash
While backing up a customer’s drive via USB to one of my internal native ATA backup drives, my system locked and crashed (not resolved yet, perhaps a problem with the customer’s system – in the meantime, I’m using Plan B, another native internal ATA drive already prepped for my machine).
Chrome was “the only man standing”, and continued to work flawlessly while Microsoft XP Pro Windows Explorer and the backup program (Microsoft DOS XCopy), and even Microsoft Task Manager crashed all around it, became unstable, and inoperative. I was very impressed at Chrome’s integrity, as I continued to browse and open and close Chrome windows/tabs/sessions (they are apparently mixed, as some tabs appear to share memory sessions with each other). I continued to browse for hours using Chrome to successfully do my business work, even though the computer in which Chrome was running was completely crashed.
Upon reboot, I got an unresolvable blue screen of death, by the way, the Microsoft crash in which Chrome uniquely stood tall and functional was that bad. I am now very very confident that what we have all been asking Microsoft to do – build a reliable operating system, a quick, neat, clean, simple, RELIABLE operating system – is possible, very possible. My experience of Chrome proves it’s possible, for me.
Oh, yes, Chrome crashes for me daily, usually after downloading ZIP files and trying to open them from within Chrome’s download file status bar. So, instead, I close Chrome’s download file status bar, and open the file using Microsoft XP Pro Windows Explorer. After each Chrome crash, it immediately re-opened into the previous tabs and had saved all my typing that I had entered into web pages but had not completed and sent yet. Amazing! Nothing lost.
Chrome stands when Microsoft falls, and stands up again even when Microsoft finds a way to momentarily pull Chrome down. Chrome protects my data and gives me access to my data long after Microsoft has given up and shut down and locked me out.
We have a winner, and the winner is Google.
Chrome may be missing features, but not benefits!
Earlier: “… Uninstalled the first day… Simply because there’s no home button. My iGoogle page is my homepage because it has all of my news, email and weather on it.
Opening a new tab to be taken to the same thing opera has had for quite a while was a hassle, I want a home button and there simply wasn’t one there and no way to easily add it…”
Yes, I found a was missing familiar features, presuming the benefits of those features could not be gotten any other way. I was as wrong as you are wrong!
For instance, I missed not being able to continue to build my encyclopedic hierarchy of bookmarks. Then I found that if I type what I am looking for into the address field, Google helps me find it faster than I could have found it in my arcane bookmark system anyway. The address fiels also behaves as Google search field – clever! One down.
Home page? Google remembers previous pages if you want, so why not close Chrome with your “home” page on screen, so it always opens there next time, or just make your Chrome icon a shortcut to your home page URL so it opens there first? Same same, and then you’re getting what you’re after without adding another control, a single purpose control, to the dashboard.
Look at our cars. Yes, we have a map box (ne glove compartment!), but do we always ask the map box for permission to go anyplace when we drive? Or do we go most places directly, and use feedback on the road to guide our specific daily trajectory? How many people even have maps in their cars all the time anymore?
I don’t need the map’s help or permission anymore to go to 99% of my routine destinations. Browser wise, I find that some of my bookmarks were aging anyway, and lead to dead ends where I had to web search to find where it had moved or to find a replacement anyway. So what good was the bookmark after all?
Try right clicking a page – “save as…” appears, so we don’t needs a traditional [File],[Save as] pull down menu strip across the top. Google Chrome found another way to provide the benefit without having the constant on-screen feautre of a fime menu bar. And so on. Chrome is smarter than we think.
My point is that the simplicity of Chrome belies it’s sophisticated intelligence and capability. C’mon back and explore it a little more, and you’ll probably find neater, faster ways to accomplish your goals. As Apple once said, “Think different.” It won’t hurt!
Never tried it. Never will.
Earlier: “… Never tried it. Never will … Not sure why Google … announce a browser. WTF, Google? There are already enough browsers out there … Firefox is my choice …”
Versus, from the same poster: “… adding too much to a browser no longer makes it a browser. Worse, it makes it more difficult for the stupid users out there to properly set up (think ActiveX here, folks). Why is just a basic program so hard for people to actually develop anymore? Complaints about memory “hoggage”, crashing apps, and other issues just seems totally stupid for a program that’s main purpose is to surf the web …”
I think you just sold yourself on the reason to try Chrome. Unlike Firefox or IE, it’s not adding too much, not disrespecting memory, not crashing itself, and, rather painfully obviously, it’s “… main purpose is to surf the web …” – period.
Maybe you should rethink “… Never tried it. Never will …”
Chrome
I really like Chrome, and when we get a form-filler add-on, it will become my default browser.
Chrome is now my default browser
Chrome is my default browser as of today — sure, I still use other browsers for particular tasks, but when I want to read content (ballparking that at 70%+ of my browsing time, probably more into reading print in a browser than the standard user, less into video) nothing beats the quick start/quick page load.
PDF etc
Cannot get to work with Foxtit (I do not want to use bloat ware Adbobe PDF Reader. Google’s co-founder Larry Page prefers Foxit and hates the load time with Adobe also. Downloading the PDF then opening it separately may have to do until an API.
Crashes during loading of attachments for me at one website
A few sites inoperable. Yes fast, clean, easy.
Bill Gates wasted his millions – the Microsoft design philosophy is such a silly religion we have all wasted so much time with and so many lost opportunities in software development! Crash Vista Crash. Stop treating me like a fool Bill. Good on you Google and thank you Firefox. Gimme a job making software for people!
IE cookies won't 'enable' after Chrome was de-installed.
A friend of mine tried Chrome and wasn’t thrilled. So she de-installed it. Windows XP workstation.
Now when she goes to her bank-it yells about cookies being enabled. They are. Either via Tools; Internet Options; Privacy; and then sliding bar for Settings/Select a setting for the Internet Zone. Or the Advanced Privacy Settings; Over automatic cookie handling checked, as well as Always allow session cookies.
I have even gone to the trouble of deinstalling all patches for IE7 and then IE7; reapplied IE7 and its latest patches.
No luck. She is an older woman, so going back to Chrome may not be an option. I might convince her of Firefox. But I’m really curious why this extreme deinstall/reinstall doesn’t work, short of a registry hack(?).
I don’t know if I would have kept it or not, because I could never get it to work. Some kind of “sandbox” issue…