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Maxo
Your tax dollars at work.
Premium Member
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL

Maxo to KodiacZiller

Premium Member

to KodiacZiller

Re: Google Chrome Now the No. 1 Browser in the World

said by KodiacZiller:

Rightly so in some cases, but not in regard to Chrome. It is a 100% open source browser (just like Firefox). It would be pretty hard to hide some nefarious world takeover plot in the code.

Chromium is a 100% open-source browser. Chrome is Chromium with proprietary code added in. Mostly flash and codecs, but some other stuff too, like PDF rendering. It would be possible to hide tracking in those proprietary bits, but it's almost certain that if it existed it would be found quickly and that would legitimately ruin trust in Chrome. The risk to Google would far exceed the benefit.

KodiacZiller
Premium Member
join:2008-09-04
73368

KodiacZiller

Premium Member

said by Maxo:

said by KodiacZiller:

Rightly so in some cases, but not in regard to Chrome. It is a 100% open source browser (just like Firefox). It would be pretty hard to hide some nefarious world takeover plot in the code.

Chromium is a 100% open-source browser. Chrome is Chromium with proprietary code added in. Mostly flash and codecs, but some other stuff too, like PDF rendering. It would be possible to hide tracking in those proprietary bits, but it's almost certain that if it existed it would be found quickly and that would legitimately ruin trust in Chrome. The risk to Google would far exceed the benefit.

Yes, you are right about Chromium. This is why I suggest people use it (instead of Chrome itself) if they are really worried about Google (Iron offers no advantages over Chromium). With all the paranoid people out there, such tracking would have been discovered long ago in the code, I can assure you.

I personally have no problem with automatic updates. If I were Google, I would do the same thing. Too many people out there are clueless and don't know how or care to update. Then their box gets owned and they blame Google. This is one of the reasons Google bundles Flash -- so they can keep control of its security updates (since it has obviously has a pretty bad security record). As far as I know, Flash can easily be disabled, so I don't see really what the hoopla is about.

And, yes, I agree that Flash is closed-source binary blob POS. But unless you don't want to be able to view online videos, we are pretty much stuck with it for the time being. Google has the opt-in HTML5 program on YouTube which is nice, but it still doesn't cover all videos. Go anywhere else besides YouTube, and 90% of the time videos are encoded for Flash. I really wish Flash would die and HTML5 would take over, but we aren't there yet.