On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 12:19 PM, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:

On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 23:21:55 +0100 James Freer jessejazza3.uk@gmail.com allegedly wrote:

...

[running Xubuntu]

Just wondering if anyone uses it and what their thoughts are!

[1] That depends upon your attitude to privacy.

...

I decided to have a change from Firefox. I liked Chrome and didn't find any problems - except for the bookmarks. In FF i installed the google toolbar and had all my bookmarks stored in my gmail account. Useful while i was teaching and using lots of different machines...(no longer)  but i've got into the habit so i wanted to do that with Chrome. Setting up Sync and logging in to gmail i don't find it syncing at all. Having installed Chrome i then found that FF google toolbar bookmarks didn't work. Assuming there was conflict between the browsers i removed FF and google toolbar - problem remains.

I think i've found a glitch somehow and will only know when i install the new Xubuntu release.

[2] I have a real problem with google. Their business model (funded by advertising) is inconsistent with my concept of personal privacy rights. If you find it OK to let google know everything about your browsing habits (and the fact that you have stored your bookmarks in a google service suggests that you do find it OK), then I'd say go ahead and use chrome.

[3] Personally I wouldn't use chrome (which calls home to a variety of google networks in an interesting fashion) do that. Nor would I ever use the google toolbar which also reports back to google in a way that many may find disturbing. For example, I recall a while back some security researchers reporting that they had found that google had indexed pages which were supposedly "orphaned" (i.e they did not have links from anywhere on the web) and so should have been invisible. It turned out that google toolbar reported visited pages so the advertising giant "discovered" them.

Now "security through obscurity" is not necessarily a good idea, but I'd bet that many people have created "private" web pages which have no external inward links in the belief that no search engine could then would find them. If they have google toolbar installed (or anyone they send the link to has that installed, then this is not true.

[4] The fact that chrome doesn't support the nascent "do not follow" standard and that google is fighting hard against any legislative attempt to enforce the standard is also indicative of their stance.

Mick

Hi Mick

I much appreciated your reply. Sorry not to reply sooner but i've been caught up one way or another for a week and haven't got round to putting 'pen to paper' or perhaps i suppose 'thoughts to keyboard'.

I wonder what you'd have written if i said i'd installed Chromium! Installing Chrome was part of my hunt to find a better browser. I find Firefox 'hangs' after any lengthy browsing... it always seems to have done, i recall switching to Netscape back in about 2004/2005 because it was so bad and hasn't improved much in many ways. Seamonkey seems to have inherited some of that. I started looking for something better and wasn't too impressed by Epiphany which is supposed to be Debian's default browser [i think].

It seems google have taken the OS code and made their own - with it perhaps some of their "sinful additions". I thought it was easier to reply by numbering the paragraphs.

1] In my mind is do they really collect data about individuals? One can suspect them of doing such things but why would they do it. They are a business focussed on developing search on the internet. I see no reason to believe they actually do anything with that data other than pursuing that objective. Would they take passwords and look in detail at what individuals access? The security risk is far too high. Someone would have got into the google complex and splashed it across the world by now - google would be dead within a couple of days. I'm sure the google complex security is ten times that of Fort Knox but even so.

2] I don't find it ok but... i recognise that for them to provide an excellent service finance has got to come into the picture somehow. The fact that the advertising means that an organisation for a high fee gets pole position on page one of a google search compared with that pays less. BUT if one compares with other search engines it's surprising how much they vary... but then only some of the time. So how are Altavista, Ask.com etc getting funds to pay staff. I haven't done any comparisons for a few years now i admit. I've just used google as i've felt they were more ahead in research than others. Google are very smart i must say... the features they provide for free are excellent - they wouldn't be able to do that without finance somehow. What have i browsed today; Spaceship Galactica, ebay, solid fuel stoves - so what. In summary perhaps it's appropriate to say one should be WARY of google recording visits. But then again one can search 'death camps'... and all these places spring up across a certain country - no one knows why/what purpose they are for [gosh what have i written perhaps i'll get 'neutralised' next week by men in black... google might be studying this email]. I have not found any evidence that google has blocked information or in effect provides contrived searches.

3] You raise an good point here. I had a website that i used to test out some mindmapping. I was chuffed that google had found it... maybe it was from google toolbar - but i also tried a search at school and it found it (no google toolbar used). I merely used google toolbar to stop me deleting my valuable bookmarks when i did a reinstall [but that was a while back and i'm rather better now at backups! I'd remember everything apart from bookmarks]. Google is for finding info and that's what it did - just because there were no links... doesn't necessarily mean that google toolbar was reporting pages - it found them. Since using bookmarks (html stored in home directory) over the last few weeks i must say it's quicker than using google bookmarks via the toolbar so i doubt if i'll be using it again. I should try Chromium... but i've read a load of bugs and yet to see many for Chrome.

4] You could well be right. But they want to stop that legislation as it would limit their scope for a search engine. Stuff shouldn't be on the web if it's not to be found and read. I've been surprised at what google's found when i've posted on various forums on topics of gardening, dogs and classic cars.

Perhaps i'm naive but i think google are very smart and deserve their success. The World watches them but i think they're clean. As for gmail; there are some things that irritate me but AOL and other's nothing like as good. The 'conversations' make list replies very easy, one can set an email client but i find them far too slow for my amount of mail - only one i've found useable is Alpine but for 'conversations' far too slow. Star important emails i don't want to delete and when it comes to 'clearing', search the 'unstarred' and then delete.

james