Google's Chrome May Need Polishing
Less than a day out, and already frustrated users are posting about the Googleupdate "virus" which continually tries to gain Internet access even if Chrome itself isn't active. (And allegedly even after Chrome has been uninstalled). Sample posts on that topic are here. and here, and here. For removal tips, see "How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe".
Other complaints about Google Chrome include a surprising inability to view YouTube movies (surprising because Google owns YouTube). The same videos run fine in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, but when attempted via Google Chrome, it either displays the message ""We're sorry, this video is no longer available" or it tells you the Adobe Flash Movie Plugin is not installed.
Equally perplexing, the Terms of Service for Chrome are a bit confusing when it comes to intellectual property rights. Initially it seems reassuring with this disclaimer:
"Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist)."But the referenced Section 11 states:
"By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."
Edit: According to Google Chromium Developer Jim Roskind, Google Chrome isn't pre-fetching pages, but rather simply pre-resolving the IP address for the anticipated page request. For details, see: Google Chrome Not Prefetching Pages. (Note that this correction doesn't apply to Firefox, which prefetches the first page of Google search results. To disable Firefox prefetch, see: How to Disable Google Pre-Fetching in Firefox).
I downloaded Chrome yesterday and one of the first sites I went to was YouTube. It worked perfectly for me. Whoever it is saying they can not get YouTube videos to work probably had trouble with them before they ever installed Chrome.
As far as the Terms of Service Agreement, you would do well to actually read the entire paragraph containing the text of your paraphrased “quotes.” Had you included the last sentence of your quoted section 9.4 it would be very clear they are talking about the limit to Google’s liability to enforce your intellectual property for you.
And further, had you included the entirety of section 11.1 in your quote it would clearly spell out “You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services” and the last sentence “This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.” When read in entirety, especially when that last sentence is included, both sections make crystal clear sense.
Don’t forget, Chrome is just a Beta and was just released the other day. Of course its going to need “polishing”.
I had the “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” problem too, and I uninstalled the Google Web Accelerator (check your Start menu), and the problem is fixed now.
As a developer on the Chromium open source project, I was the engineer responsible for designing and implementing the DNS Prefetch feature that you explained how to disable (re: ). I was proud that the speed you saw in Google Chrome was so great that you might have thought that some web pages were being prefetched before you clicked on them. However, I was sad that our wording confused you about what was really being done when the above feature is enabled. To set the record straight:
Google Chrome doesn’t prefetches web pages before [the user] actually visits them. When the checkbox for “Use DNS pre-fetching to improve page load performance” is checked, it does lookup some domain names in advance, such as “antivirus.about.com”. That lookup finds out what IP address should be used *if* the user wants to visit a related page.
That seemingly tiny lookup task, which doesn’t generally even contact the domain’s server, can often speed up a later page visit by as much as a second (sometimes several seconds or more). For some users, some of the time, this speed up may be so miraculous that the users will think that pages were prefetched, but they were not. Disabling this feature will generally add back the DNS resolution delays that current web surfers have come to expect and endure, but that is about all that will happen.
I hope the info helps, and I hope you and your readers enjoy using Google Chrome!
Thanks,
Jim Roskind
Chromium Developer
(opinions stated are mine, and not my employer’s).
Hi Jim,
Thanks very much for that clarification. It’s quite a relief to learn that Chrome isn’t actually pre-fetching pages. Though maybe that wording should be changed from “pre-fetching” to pre-resolving”…?
I’ll get an update posted right away.
– Mary
I have been using Google chrome to watch lots of youtube video’s with no issues
I never even seen these errors
We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” or it tells you the Adobe Flash Movie Plugin is not installed
I am not a tech-head. I downloaded Chrome as soon as it was available, and it buggered up my laptop immediately. Thankfully I cancelled it. I don’t intend to trust it again.
How can Chrome or other virus be enable to preload pages? I would like to do this and I am sure it will vastly speed up the speed of surfing?
I’m also getting this ‘We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.’ error. Every single youtube video gives the same diagnostic except the promoted videos; they give ‘This webpage is not available.’ with an extended address string.
Only a problem with Chrome – Firefox and IE both work fine.
I had the problem with Youtube as well on Chrome (tho’ not on IE or Firefox). It was due to an incompatibility with settings in Kaspersky AV : http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=7722152cb151490c&hl=en
Maybe even if you haven’t got Kaspersky installed, if you tweak your antivirus settings ?
I have to disable my firewall to search web with
Chrome. Sending email also is not that goo