bookmark_borderA new shiny browser

Boy, am I ever glad I held back from posting about the new browser from Google.

It’s been an interesting couple of days though, starting with the comic book style introduction which I kinda like. This raised several flags in my professional circle, both amongst the geeks (ohh we re-use the Javascript engine..) and the technical writers (a comic? but there is no navigation or structure!), but was interesting enough to hold my attention so, hey, it worked for me.

Then the download was made available and, gosh, isn’t it BLUE. And looky at the clever things it does, and all the new shiny stuff. Wow, it’s .. a browser. OK OK, it is fast, and there are some really smart ideas in the background but, for most people, it’s just another browser. Seriously, my Mum (who is now officially another year wiser! Happy Birthday Mum!) doesn’t care that all the processes and objects are held on a per tab basis, she just wants to read her email and forward me crap jokes.

It’s also hard to criticise something that isn’t even at version 1.0.

[insert joke about Google products that remain in BETA indefinitely]

And then the EULA police descended. Oh my god!, they said, Google want to own your content, they want to invade your country and, shit on a brick, they are gonna EAT YOUR BABIES!!!!!!!

Or something like that.

Now I do understand that the terms in their EULA were, frankly, ludicrous, and the outcry was fairly justifiable. But here’s the thing.

Most of the people (all?) that downloaded, install and ran the Chrome browser are geeks. This is simply because we are the type of people that do such things. We are also the type of people who routinely click through an installation wizard as fast as possible, ignoring such things as EULA statements (not even apparently, but still the majority I’d warrant).

Furthermore I’d suggest that a fair number of the people who downloaded and installed Chrome also work in the software industry, and when it comes to the ‘legal’ stuff? Yeah we just take whatever file we are told to use and bung it in where it should go, right?

Is it possible that the EULA that was released with Google Chrome was just a file that was lying around? Or do people really think that Google would try such a thing? Remember, Google do know how the internet works, probably better than you or I, they know that such things get found out, and found out quickly.

So, all in all, it’s good that they’ve changed their EULA.

Now, if they could just give me a way to make the Chrome windows look like the rest of my deskop windows, that’d be great!