Googling Google

Christopher Dawson, Sam Diaz and Matt Weinberger

Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?

By | September 2, 2010, 8:26pm PDT

Summary: Now that Google Chrome is 2, are we in for temper tantrums, meltdowns, and embarrassing scenes in shopping malls?

They’re cute when they’re this age, aren’t they? Adorable and sweet, even when they’re fussy. As this little girl’s 4 older brothers will happily tell you, babies (especially the first baby girl after 4 boys) can do no wrong.

Then they turn 2.

Now I’ve never experienced a 2-year old girl, so I can’t completely predict when the “precious little princess” (as our waitress called her tonight) will turn into an evil demon toddler, but most parents will tell you that all the wonder, learning, and growing interactivity of 6-24 months comes to a grinding halt at the ripe old age of 2. They’re not called the terrible 2’s for nothing, right?

Occasionally, though, you get a kid who just sort of skips them. Not to say that 2 is a piece of cake for them, free of temper tantrums or frustration, but it’s a walk in the park compared to some of the more, shall we say, strong-willed toddlers. My current 8-year old was like that. We considered sending him back after 6 months of colic, so I think he knew better by that time. He was pretty easy. My current 15-year old, however, was delightful until someone threw the evil switch at 2 (and then increased the voltage at 3, only finally turning it off at 5).

Just like with your kids, time flies and, as ZDNet’s Ryan Naraine pointed out, Google’s Chrome browser turned 2 on Thursday:

Google’s Chrome browser is two years old today and the company celebrated the milestone with a new version chock-filled with feature enhancements and security fixes.

The Google Chrome 6.0, available in stable and beta channels for Windows, Mac, and Linux, patches a total of 15 documented security vunerabilities.

Chrome has been my browser of choice for some time, occasionally being displaced by a particularly nice release of Opera or Firefox, but generally humming along lickity-split on any computer on which I installed it. Until Google released stable versions of Chrome for Mac and Linux, I often ended up using Chromium (the open source project that drives the Chrome browser and Chrome OS), but the basic software was the same. It was fast, integrated well with Google Apps, supported useful extensions, and was often the first to support HTML 5-enable sites.

Now that it’s 2, are we in for temper tantrums, meltdowns, and embarrassing scenes in shopping malls? I don’t think so. It’s one thing for Google to roll out Buzz and not have anyone be interested. Wave fizzles? Meh. A new Google Labs feature gets canned? Silly engineers. But if the very window to the Internet that Google has created to thwart the world-domination plans entertained by both its Redmond and Cupertino nemeses so much as hiccups, Google will have some serious problems on its hands. Particularly given Chrome’s speedy rise in market share, Google needs to maintain momentum with its browser, avoiding the sorts of setbacks that the engineering company can usually shrug off as Labs exercises and lessons learned.

Here’s hoping that Chrome actually ages in dog years, has skipped toddlerhood, and is on the cusp of adulthood. Happy birthday, Chrome!

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Topics

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Biography

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider. He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.

Talkback Most Recent of 20 Talkback(s)

  • Chrome is now my organisation's browser of choice
    Its fast, secure, extensions are good and everyone loves using it.
    And the main thing i noticed recently is that it renders pretty much every site properly these days.
    The only one i have hit recently that doesn't work properly? Microsoft partner portal.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    FCGDave
    2nd Sep 2010
  • Same here
    @FCGDave
    Most people in my office have gradually gravitated towards Chrome as well.
    My main complaint for it is that it does not seem to be able to fully load all aspects of the "My T-Mobile" page. I find this absurd as T-Mobile has been one of Google's biggest allies the last couple of years.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    kwabinalars
    3rd Sep 2010
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    @kwabinalars Tmobile's web is generally broken at some place or another regardless of the browser. I even managed to score a free Android smart phone with no contract because of bugs in the website that I called to complain about. Chrome is probably doing things right but Tmobile isn't.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    hawks5999
    3rd Sep 2010
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    @kwabinalars

    "I find this absurd as T-Mobile has been one of Google's biggest allies the last couple of years."

    That kind of logic trivalizes the problem and in short doesn't work. Using companies I've been at as a model, I can tell you T-Mobile (I have no affiliation with them) has an organization (or paid one) to create their storefront (which has customer functions). That org has been entrenched with only having to think about IE and Firefox for the last few years. All their regression tests (QA) happen to be for those browsers and none others.

    In short, supporting multiple browsers is a major pain in the a** and it is a process that doesn't happen overnight.

    This is what happens when you have an abomination such as IE6 living for years and Years and YEARS.

    From a business perspective a T-Mobile executive has plenty of reason not to even bother supporting Chrome. With Chrome's small market share, there just aren't enough users to p*ss off if they don't support it. Beyond that, it's easy to rationalize (and probably true) that most Chrome users are not technophobes - they'll launch Firefox or (gasp) IE if need be. You can add me to that list.

    -M
    ZDNet Gravatar
    betelgeuse68
    3rd Sep 2010
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    @kwabinalars Thanks for the information. This is a wonderful post!!
    Essay Help
    Coursework Help
    Assignment Help
    ZDNet Gravatar
    johnny48
    18th Oct
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    @johnny48 Very nice Site number one topic Thanks you..
    Dissertation Help
    Thesis Help
    ZDNet Gravatar
    johnny48
    18th Oct
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    @FCGDave same for me. Chrome has far exceeded FF and IE. It is easy to organize and its natural google applications inter-connectivity really helps in a lot of areas.
    sam - sinc all
    ZDNet Gravatar
    soskert
    11th Oct
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    Hopefully Chrome will skip over the terrible two's. I think it was at this age that Firefox really started to go down hill and during into the bloated mess it is now.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    craigvn@...
    2nd Sep 2010
  • DNS Pre-fetch
    I've been using Chrome since it was released. My only issue has been a nagging page cannot be displayed due to DNS resolution problem. At times, it has been maddening in terms of frequency. Finally, I turned off DNS pre-fetch and this problem appears to have solved. I think there's some compatibility issue with my AT&T wireless router, which isn't necessarily Chrome's fault.

    All-in-all though, it's a great browser. Compared to IE, it launches faster including new tabs. However, it doesn't appear to have a significant typical page load advantage over IE8 except in cases of sites like littlegreenfootballs.com, which uses heavy JavaScript on its comments pages. When there 500+ comments, Chrome renders the page much faster than IE, but it will be interesting to see how IE9 handles this.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    jjworleyeoe
    3rd Sep 2010
  • Corporate
    You still to load up IE to access certain sites. That is the biggest challenge. Until most sites allow universal browser compability, Microsoft is always one great release from getting a strangle hold over the web standards. Many banking, corporate, and everyday sites still need IE and this has to change for any browser to become dominant over Microsoft.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    rgor@...
    3rd Sep 2010
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    @rgor@... https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd

    I had the same problem. This is a lifesaver. You set which pages you want to render in Chrome using an IE engine
    ZDNet Gravatar
    skelden
    10th Sep 2010
  • Back to Firefox
    After spending a while with Chrome, I'm back to Firefox now via the Firefox Beta. It appears they have solved the issues with it locking up, and it has more Chrome-like tabs and new features that I really like.

    Why I now prefer the Firefox beta:
    -App tabs.
    -Firefox "Panorama" (previously "tab candy").
    -All of my old extensions (not all have a Chrome equivalent).
    ZDNet Gravatar
    CobraA1
    3rd Sep 2010
  • App Tabs?
    @CobraA1

    Can you elaborate or post a link to explanation? Thanks!
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DevJonny
    7th Sep 2010
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    On my MacBook Pro, I now use Camino 2, Firefox 4, Chrome 7, and Safari 5 (but only when I need to). Camino and Chrome are rockets, stable, and efficient. Firefox is quick and fully-featured. Safari is 100% OS X compliant. Each has its uses, but I use Camino or Chrome about 95% of the time. Chrome, of course, has the advantage of being Chromium driven and Google based. They are all great.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    markomd
    3rd Sep 2010
  • RE: Google Chrome turns 2: Can we skip the toddler years?
    I love Chrome but Google makes too many changes and then silently pushes out the "upgrades". In Chome 6 they have removed http:// from the address bar, pushed the favorites star to the right and folded the page menu under the wrench. In each case, I wouldn't mind if I could tell Chrome to go back to the old ways through a settings page. But Google thinks their way is better and they can show all sorts of testing to prove it I'm sure. But it disrupts the way I've grown accustomed to using my browser and so it's not better for me. Google needs to give control back to the users when they push out default changes to the UI.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    hawks5999
    3rd Sep 2010

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