Category: 8050

Must be getting kick backs from Google.  They can’t seriously be promoting this can they?

In a recent Gmail blog post, a Google engineer has put together an app that helps deter you from sending out drunken emails.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html

Methinks it’s time for Google start making breathalyzers mandatory for all of their employees.  If you really need an app like this (or consider developing one), you might want to consider you have other problems.

Not that it had much ground to start with, but NetApplications has been tracking Google’s Chrome.  From their numbers, though, I don’t see much of a drop-off.  Except I do see that Safari gained some ground – which to me indicates that NetApplications isn’t tracking Chrome as well as they could since Chrome is misinterpreted as Safari sometimes, since its built on Safari code.

 

Weekly market share numbers:

Week of:	Aug 24	Aug 31	Sep 7	Net Change
IE	72.39%	71.03%	71.24%	(1.15%)
Firefox	19.54%	19.78%	19.35%	(0.19%)
Safari	6.27%	6.67%	6.95%	0.68%
Chrome	—–	0.67%	0.85%	0.85%
Opera	0.74%	0.75%	0.70%	(0.04%)
Netscape	0.77%	0.83%	0.67%	(0.10%)

 

Here’s what NetApplications had to say in a recent newsletter:

Net Applications Global Internet Usage Market Share is tracking Google Chrome by the hour, as can be seen here: Chrome Marketshare by the Hour

While Chrome got off to an amazing start, reaching over 1% market share within the first 24 hours of its launch, the early adopters are fading. The trend line for Chrome shows it slowly losing market share day by day. Now, only in the middle of the night (for the US) does Chrome peak its above 1%.

Initially, Chrome claimed all of its market share at the expense of Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, as of last week, the Chrome share was coming fairly evenly from all the other major browsers except for Safari But, since Chrome doesn't yet work on Mac OS, that me be the reason why Safari is immune so far.

For these and other Global Market Share Statistics, go to marketshare.hitslink.com.

http://www.myitforum.com/absolutenm/templates/IndustryNews.aspx?articleid=5658&zoneid=71

Looking through myITforum.com stats for the past couple months I noticed that recently, access to myITforum.com using Safari has jumped dramatically.  Before Chrome was released, Safari was not even in the top 10 list.  Now Safari is listed at number 8.  It appears that Chrome is not even identifying itself properly.

So, how is Google able to promote their own numbers?  I used 2 different stats reporting tools, and both results are the same.

Chrome gets an update to fix the Google developers’ security oversights…

http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2008/09/beta-release-0214929.html 

In the post they iterate how important it is that you keep their updater program on your computer.  Unfortunately, they don’t mention that you can only get rid of the updater program manually.

“Automatic updates are a key security feature in helping to ensure the safety of Google Chrome users.”

Actually, I think uninstalling is probably the best security measure at this point.  Don’t run this browser on a production computer.  Of course, we all know that about beta products right?  I mean, you’re not running the Gmail beta (or any other Google beta) on your production computer, are you?

Google Chrome plays outside of Vista Security Zones

With a few utterly simple keywords like balance, account and Sept., everything from balance information, account numbers and even how much you spent at Costco can be pulled up.

http://www.myitforum.com/absolutenm/templates/IndustryNews.aspx?articleid=5599&zoneid=71

 

 

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run:

My recent identification of a lingering Chrome installation file that continues to run at OS boot even though Chrome was uninstalled, brought on an interesting comment to the post that needs some clarification.  Without researching further into the matter, or even asking any questions to further clarify the situation, this is the response…

Wednesday, September 03, 2008 11:16 AM by Paladin

Hey bonehead…  googleupdate does not specificly belong to Chrome, so it obviously would not uninstall along with Chrome.  www.file.net/…/googleupdate.exe.html

its no different than any other update process, like HP, Symantec, Windows, etc.   If you had the google toolbar or the like then it was there before you installed Chrome.

On it’s own, the information in the post is definitely good and has merit.  In certain situations it makes sense.  But, in my case, further clarification would have shown that it doesn’t fit.

So, my response to the comment?

Hey, silly man.  I have never installed the Google toolbar or any other Google app on this computer prior to Chrome.  This computer was Google free until yesterday.  So, you would think that GoogleUpdate.exe would uninstall when I asked Chrome to uninstall, wouldn't you?  Shouldn't it at least, remove itself from the OS RUN key so that it no longer runs at startup?

I made this post hoping to get another response from the mysterious Paladin.  We’ll see.