Browsersphere

I’m all for raising privacy concerns, as long as it is done well and responsibly.  However, this morning I stumbled upon a gem of an article that tries to make claims about Google Chrome’s policies that simply aren’t true.  The sad thing is, the only research needed to deny the claims made in the article involves launching the browser and going to a URL.

In Chrome is not an Internet Browser and not open, but closed to the Internet’s Domain Name System, Scott Cleland, a self-proclaimed “prescient analyst,” claims that Chrome is “a gateway to Google’s datacenter to browse Google’s mirror copy of the Internet and track the user’s every movement.”  However, the two most incredible claims in the article are as follows:

• “Google’s Chrome browser effectively eliminates the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) address bar where a user can directly go to [a] URL.”
• “When one puts a URL, www.brand.com, into Google’s OmniBox search bar they do not go where they asked to go but to Google’s results page where Google can advertise against that brand without sharing the ad revenues with that brand, and where Google can offer competitors an opportunity to divert the user from their requested destination and to a competitor’s destination.”

The claims about Google’s “mirror copy” and bypassing the Internet Domain Name System are discredited point blank in a post from The Chromium Blog titled DNS Prefetching (or Pre-Resolving), which states “Google Chrome resolves domain names…using your computer’s normal DNS resolution mechanism; no connection to Google is used.”

That second bullet point, though, is the most easily discredited.  If you launch Chrome and type “www.starbucks.com” into the OmniBox, you are taken to www.starbucks.com.  You aren’t taken to a search results page and certainly don’t see any competitors offering their services along the way.  If you type only “starbucks” into the OmniBox, that’s a somewhat different story, but the article is making its claim about URLs, which is just flat out wrong.

Perhaps the most concerning fact among all these non-facts is that Scott Cleland is a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and an advisor to Congress! His bio states, “eight different Congressional subcommittees have sought Cleland’s expert testimony.”

He might as well have titled his article “Chrome bypasses the series of tubes.”

Tags: Chrome, Chromium Blog, Congress, DNS, Facts, FUD, Google Chrome, OmniBox, Privacy, Scott Cleland

To borrow from Pink Floyd, is there anybody out there?

Ironically enough, Browsersphere has been neglecting the browsersphere a little like Microsoft neglected Internet Explorer earlier this decade.  After all, my last post was way back in June.  However, unlike Microsoft, it isn’t the competition that has jolted this site back to life.  On the contrary, sites like Avencius and Twitter accounts like @AltBrowser have actually made me feel a little bit better about the whole ordeal, knowing that at least someone is out there covering the browsersphere in my absence.  Truth is, the site went dark out of pure laziness on my part.  Well, that and the fact that I’ve been pretty consumed by another project.  Nevertheless, I’m back, and after catching up a bit on what’s been going on, my first order of business is to share a little bit about what’s been tweeted in the browsersphere lately.  So let’s get to it.

• Looks like @ryan45419 is working on his own web browser named iSurfWeb.
• @humancell points out that Firefox and Safari accounted for 79% of all web vulnerabilities in the first half of this year.
• @ByteEye appears to be working on its own web browser as well.
• @erichthewebguy is happy to be seeing Firefox used more and more on TV these days.
• As someone who appears to have given up on Firefox for Chrome on the Mac, @lee_cummings may have coined a new term: “nozilla.”
• @UKTJPR wonders if anyone is willing to give up their web browser for a week.
• @DevJonny points out SRWare Iron, a browser created with the Chromium source code that apparently doesn’t have all the privacy concerns of Chrome.
• @BemusedWolf, who has come up with some colorful names for Firefox and Internet Explorer, might be interested in SRWare Iron.
• @SuperDuperCam had some colorful words to share about Firefox as well.
• @BrowserNews, the creator of the Dolphin3D browser, is touting it as “a better web browser.”
• @mrtech points us to a blog entry about what the Firefox team is doing about crashes and startup time.
• @usingpond wonders if Blackbird, which sells itself as an African American browser, is for real.
• @msacks makes reference to the Lobo browser, which is all-Java and uses a rendering engine called Cobra.
• @waynehastings and @deanq appear to be pleased with Chrome for Mac OS X, with the later giving a parting shot to both Firefox and Safari.
• @chrispy2004 appears to be displeased, however, claiming that Chrome for Mac OS X is the slowest browser he’s used in a long time.
• @GameFreak4321 doesn’t seem all that pleased either.
• @JasonTselentis thanks the “Facebook browser” for finally taking away Internet Explorer’s market share.
• @KileyG wonders what the threshold is for the number of open tabs before someone becomes unproductive.
• @muhanov discovers and shares the fact that the Android web browser doesn’t support FTP.
• @ganetsky wonders how it’s possible that no one has created a web browser named “Bowser.”  Good question!  Though to be fair, some people have referred to IE as the “Bowser” browser.
• @Andrew_James claims to be in “web browser heaven.”  I wonder if Netscape’s there.
• Both @jamienguyenle and @jinkhet refer to Chrome using sexual terms.
• @nicnab asserts that Firefox’s remembering of per-site zoom levels is enough to keep him hooked on said browser.
• @ConduitYourSite wonders what the best Twitter lists for browsers and web-related tools are.
• As I often have, @alex_crawshaw finds it ironic that you need to use a web browser in order to download an alternative one.
• @propstm wonders if IE6 users even realize what they’re missing out on, using such an out-of-date web browser.
• @derickthemacguy says Google Chrome looks like “a Fisher Price version of a web browser.”
• @souravghosh says that Mosaic “is considered the first browser to make the Internet easily accessible to non-techies.”
• @C_Hernandez_ heard that Camino is the fastest browser for Macs and apparently is going to check it out.
• @omegatron laments, as do many I’m sure, the fact that his mom doesn’t know the difference between a web browser and a web page.
• @Allyssen points us to a split-screen browser for the iPhone called iNetDual.
• @ericylai recommends the Bolt browser, which also happens to support a split-screen mode (check out the demo), for those tired of the default Blackberry browser.
• @IHtherapies finds KidZui, a web browser targeted at kids, very cool.
• Even if it’s “a bit slow,” Firefox is still @flyfiddlesticks‘ favorite browser.
• @abhishek tweeted about the Facebooker browser, which is currently available as a release candidate.
• @juandelpozo makes reference to Infinity Web Browser, a web browser for Android.
• @va3stl gave Midori a try.
• @wordtree likes the idea of trying a text-based web browser like Lynx.
• @tr4st recommends Lunascape, the “world’s first and only triple engine browser,” to web developers.
• @sphereinabox wants to know what mobile web browsers, other than Safari, support offline storage.  If geek.com is to believed, it looks like Fennec does, too.
• And finally, @rodhilton loves that Ubuntu lets him use a web browser while the operating system is still installing.

That’s it for Twitter Watch #3.  Believe it or not, Twitter Watch #2 was so long ago that I was still using Summize to search for tweets.

Before I end this post, since we’re on the subject of Twitter, I should mention that Browsersphere is now on Twitter as well.  Just follow @Browsersphere for real-time updates, links to new site content, etc.

Tags: Android, Avencius, Blackberry, Blackbird, Bolt, Chrome, Chromium, Cobra, Dolphin3D, Facebook, Facebooker, Fennec, Firefox, Google Chrome, iNetDual, Infinity, Internet Explorer, iPhone, iSurfWeb, KidZui, Lobo, Lunascape, Lynx, Mac, Microsoft, Midori, Mosaic, Netscape, Performance, Privacy, Rendering, Rendering Engines, Safari, Split-screen, SRWare Iron, Summize, Tabs, TV, Twitter, Ubuntu, Vul, Vulnerabilities