

Why I’m dumping Google Chrome - RachelF
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/210576-why-im-dumping-google-chrome

======
humanfromearth
I'm really glad Chrome forces the update. Because I would be sad supporting
Chrome 32, 33, 34, 35, ..., 40, 41.. in my Chrome Extension. I would hate
using polyfills everywhere and modernizers for my webapps. All I need to care
about is 1 version. The latest.

Sadly this doesn't happen sometimes as people still don't upgrade, but most do
which is fine for me. I hope it stays that way.

As for crashes, that's pretty bad to be sure, but I didn't see the OP try
filling a bug-report.

~~~
iandanforth
I think a lot of people are missing the point of the author. He's not against
auto-updating browsers. He's against

1\. Violation of stated policies

If you tell me I can disable updating and then update anyway, I have been lied
to. A promise was broken, an expectation violated. It is totally reasonable
for him to be upset about this.

2\. The excessive harassment of a tiny minority of users.

Several people in this thread have lauded the default nature of Chrome
updates, and they're right! But it is that very default which makes the
harassing banners and warnings all the more pernicious. Who is google
bothering? The 99% of users we (as developers) care about and who haven't gone
to great lengths to disable auto updating? No, they are only bothering the
tech savvy, persistent, already annoyed user.

This is simply _not_ where the burden of support comes from. As an anecdote
the company I work for recently received a complaint that our website wasn't
rendering properly. On investigation it turned out the user was trying to
browse in lynx! While we're obviously disappointed that wordpress isn't lynx
friendly we are going to spend 0 minutes trying to fix that.

~~~
coldtea
> _If you tell me I can disable updating and then update anyway, I have been
> lied to. A promise was broken, an expectation violated. It is totally
> reasonable for him to be upset about this._

I don't think they told him anything -- he just used an unofficial method to
stop it that worked before, and then they changed it.

------
nkoren
Chrome's updates aren't infallible. A year or so ago, there was a Chrome
release which was crashing nearly constantly. Fortunately, switching to the
"beta" channel left that bug behind. It got re-introduced in the next update,
so I followed the actually stable release back to the "stable" channel. When
the following version arrived in "stable", the re-introduced bug hadn't been
caught, so the crashes started again. Switched back to "beta" again to dodge
the bug, and have stayed there ever since -- it's been quite stable.

Conceptually, that was a helluva pain in the ass compared to simply
downgrading to a working release.

That said: would I rather live in a world where everybody is running an up-to-
date browser, even if that browser is occasionally buggy? Or would I rather
live in a world where everybody is running a panoply of wildly out-of-date
browsers, just because they're afraid to click "yes" on an upgrade? (I know
plenty of less-tech-savvy people have been trained to never approve a dialogue
box which they don't _thoroughly_ grok; for them, browser and system updates,
etc., will NEVER be applied.) The answer is very much the former. It's
absolutely worth a rare bit of personal pain for the collective benefit of an
up-to-date browser ecosystem.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I agree that auto update should be the default. But people who are scared of
clicking "yes" on an upgrade are not the ones who will go into the registry or
edit Windows group policy settings to prevent updates.

I think what Google tries to do is to prevent sysadmins from doing with Chrome
what they did with IE in the past. The average sysadmin loves to freeze things
because that reduces the number of variables that matter for troubleshooting.

~~~
tired_man
Or they don't want to risk finding they've installed something with a
wonderful new undisclosed Zero Day exploit throughout their shop.

Updating in a corporate environment is very different from what you do at home
or a small business. Some sectors require extensive testing before rolling out
any change whatsoever.

In that case, they don't want things happening before they have tested any
proposed changes.

When a package is blown down to the network with it's configuration locked
(and set to not update), they don't expect a package to spontaneously start
updating itself.

Google might let their browser ignore "no auto updates," but may find their
browser losing market share in the corporate world. If they get booted,
chances are 50/50 if the app ever make it back in the mix.

It doesn't take much.

If I wanted a closed ecosystem, I'd have chosen Apple. Google is becoming less
and less appealing with every new decision they announce.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> In that case, they don't want things happening before they have tested any
proposed changes._

True, but let me continue that sentence: ... and as they have too little time
for testing, they tend to resist all change.

There are a few very capable IT organisations that have a systematic approach
to change. It would be a sensible thing to give them the necessary tools to
manage change. One such tool is to delay browser updates.

But there are many more incompetent IT organisations that are overwhelmed and
will keep the same browser version for 10 years if you let them.

I'm just making an observation. I don't know what the best solution is.

~~~
tired_man
The time isn't an issue at that level. They have specific tests for various
situations and the time it takes, it takes. I've seen banks spend upwards of 6
months testing before instituting software changes to trader/production
systems.

As for capable IT departments, on the large corporate scale, they fairly bulge
with competent people. Obviously not everyone's a star, but they don't suffer
idiots to live.

I don't upgrade anything until it's been on the street for a time. I let other
people play canary.

------
smt88
The author of this article obviously doesn't understand the immense pain of a
world where most browsers update manually. Besides the enormous security
issues, that also gave us IE6 headaches for 10 years.

I've honestly never heard of anyone having this crashing issue, and it sounds
like an edge case. The author is also still on Windows 7, which is a 6-year-
old OS and probably not the highest priority for Google's testing of Chrome.

A few isolated edge cases of problems like this are worth an overall safer,
FAR easier-to-develop-for web.

~~~
rrockstar
"The author is also still on Windows 7, which is a 6-year-old OS and probably
not the highest priority for Google's testing of Chrome." What? At the time of
the bug 50% of laptops/desktops on the world ran Windows 7. How could Win7 not
be the highest priority for the Chrome team?

While I agree that auto-update makes live a lot easier for web developers, i
think this strategy of actively preventing users from running an older version
requires more responsibility on the developers of Chrome to make sure the
browser is stable.

~~~
taylodl
And 40% were running Windows XP! :)

------
Lazare
Eh. I'm sorry the author had a bad experience, but ultimately, we're better
off in a world with evergreen browsers.

If we let people who think they know what they're doing decide what browser
version to run, then people who think they know what they're doing will decide
what browsers version to run. It's not an acceptable tradeoff.

~~~
millstone
Google should get to run whatever software they think is best on my computer.

~~~
coldtea
Considering most people are bad when it comes to upgrading their browsers,
leading to the IE 6 mess, then yes.

If you're an outlier and don't like it, just don't use Chrome.

------
nkron
I'm glad to hear they are forcing updates now. A family member's computer had
some extension/malware that disabled auto update of Chrome so they were
several versions behind. It seems like this policy is there to prevent malware
from being able to lock down Chrome.

------
orbitingpluto
This issue is why I don't use Selenium (in Windows) with anything but Firefox.
A forced upgrade can render your boardroom demo non-functional moments before
you have to give it.

Use the best tool for the job. I use Google Chrome for Googly things. I use
Edge/IE for Microsofty things, and I use FF for the actual web. When
javascript/Flash/HTML5 video in FF is too slow, I use Chromium.

~~~
smt88
> Use the best tool for the job.

I use Chrome for everything, and it all works great. I _never_ have to switch
to another browser the way you're describing. That sounds truly exhausting (as
well as being inefficient and unnecessary).

~~~
orbitingpluto
So do you have ActiveX running on Chrome?

When you're running on a tablet do you prefer to use Chrome over Edge?

I don't have to always switch either, but neither do I feel compelled to
pigeon-hole my experience into a single browser.

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat
everything as if it were a nail.”

~~~
smt88
I haven't used anything that required ActiveX for at least 8 years.

------
mdekkers
I got rid of chrome ages ago, for similar reasons as well Googles' attitude
that they have an inalienable right to all my data.

~~~
binaryanomaly
Same here, I consider it close to a botnet. Privacy and FF ftw!

~~~
Hjugo
+1 Google already gets enough informations, they don't have to be my standard
browser with Chrome.

------
xbmcuser

      I understand why Google is doing this as I have had to trouble shoot a few virus laden pcs where the auto update was blocked by the virus by using the registry workaround written about in the post.
      I had to nuke the whole install and start from scratch. Just to be able to install the latest version of chrome

------
smegel
I suppose if a bit of software crashes all the time, dumping it is a fair
decision.

But of all the software I use, Chrome crashes the least (single tab page
crashes very occasionally). I stopped using Firefox years ago for Chrome
because Firefox crashed so much.

I would want to know why _your_ Chrome crashes so much.

~~~
TwoBit
Years ago? So much has changed since then, for all browsers. Whatever
conclusions you made then have little relevance today.

~~~
smegel
I am not reaching conclusions about Firefox today, I don't know where you got
that from. I haven't used it because Chrome has been good to me and I haven't
had a reason to switch back.

------
a3_nm
Unlike Chrome, Chromium is open-source, so presumably no one is forbidding
people to distribute it in binary form and archive older releases. Worst comes
you could always retrieve the source code of older versions and build them
yourself: [https://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-
code](https://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/get-the-code)

As for the problem of auto-updates, if you run Chromium on Linux, install it
as root and run it as your normal user (as distributions usually do), then
presumably it won't be able to update automatically.

------
SG-
So many people here are pretty quick at jumping on the author and defending
Google's behaviour but I don't think those people actually understand what the
issues are here.

There's nothing wrong with Google's updates except when they very rarely end
up breaking something, but that's not the issue. It's that when someone has
decided to block auto-updates from Google, it will still sometimes work around
that to update itself.

99% of the people will likely want or not care if it auto-updates, but it
shouldn't try and fuck over people that don't want that and expect that.

------
doe88
I find the current browsers landscape not great actually. I'm a long time FF
user as my main browser but lately I find it anormaly slow and unresponsive on
my mac (using stable version of FF). I'm so bothered that for the first time I
thought about switching to another browser but as I'm mindful about my privacy
I don't want to use Chrome and also I'm not using Safari either because there
are UI things I don't like and too few extensions available. So inertia,
inertia, I'm keeping my FF but I'm not happy though.

~~~
smt88
On Windows and Linux, FF is faster for me than it's ever been. I wouldn't be
surprised if your issue were caused by extensions or by OS X itself.

The quality control for OS X has been spiraling down the drain for several
years. I've had tons of bizarre, work-stopping bugs on OS X lately. I had to
stop using it except to build apps.

~~~
doe88
Of course it's hard to say, what I can tell you is I have not changed my
hardware, this behavior is quite recent maybe since 1 or 2 versions back, I
tried disabling extensions, I tried keeping a small number of open tabs on my
main window (but I also must keep open tab groups with maybe a total of 30
tabs for things I'm working on), all that with no success. When I click on the
button to close a tab I observe some latency to react and effectively close
the tab. When tabs reorder on the left as tabs are closed I also observe
latency and sluggishness and likewise with scroll on some sites.

~~~
nnethercote
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-
reset-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-
ons-and-settings) might be worth trying

------
towb
I've been using Chrome for six year on the month now. Probably about the same
amount of time I used Firefox for before that. Been thinking a bit about
switching back lately even though I have no real problem with Chrome, just
think it might be healty to change stuff, six years is a long time. Plus, FF
seems to be working better on a couple of points on my linux setup.

I know it won't be the same as when we all moved from IE to Firefox or Firefox
to Chrome all those years ago, so I'm not in a hurry, and no Netflix in
Firefox yet.

~~~
smt88
Netflix definitely works in Firefox.

~~~
towb
HTML5 player on Linux?

------
Hengjie
This author seems to think that simply writing about it, replacing graphics
card, OR disabling updates will simply solve the problem for Chrome, but also
not affect browsers (without evidence to the contrary). They did all of this
without ever filing a bug report to the Chromium team.

------
grizzles
Am I the only one who noticed the subtle Under the Dome reference? Masterful.

------
baldeagle
So, what is everyone who isn't using Chrome going to use?

It's been the defacto browser for the modern web for as far back as I can
remember without thinking too hard. (Like I know once upon a time I used some
web spider search, and Netscape and IE6 forever... but I haven't realistically
thought of a main browser other than chrome in forever).

~~~
viraptor
I'm going to call this out as trolling. Chrome was first released in 2008. FF,
Mozilla, Opera, etc. were already known and used at the time. Anyone who cared
about web dev was not using IE before IE7 was released. (at least not as their
primary browser) Just look at some basic stats, there are lots of
alternatives.

------
epx
Chrome is working better than safari in my iPhone 6+

~~~
Viper007Bond
Chrome _is_ Safari is on your iPhone. It's just a UI layer on top of Safari.
Apple doesn't allow third party browser engines. It's why Firefox isn't on
iPhone but it is on Android.

But what does any of this have to do with desktop browser choices and auto-
updates?

~~~
mundanevoice
And you based this hypothesis on what source? Google Forked Webkit and it's
not really the same now.

~~~
smt88
You're right. Google did fork WebKit. But Apple doesn't allow that fork (or
any other rendering engine) on iOS. See GP: " Apple doesn't allow third party
browser engines."

------
reed1
Skim around, found 'windows', skip

------
joaq
I dumped Chrome when it auto updated one day and all pages just kept loading
forever. I actually now use Opera and I think it's pretty good.

~~~
Hengjie
Opera is actually a fork off Chrome.

~~~
jeeva
I'm unsure how you can think this, really: according to Wikipedia[1], Opera
was first released in 1995 (whilst Google was founded in '98, Chrome released
in '08).

I wondered if maybe you meant that it had forked the Chromium webkit stuff,
but it seems that Opera is using proprietary engines.

Source your claims, please?

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_\(web_browser\))

~~~
ubertaco
Opera is not, as an entity or in terms of identity, a fork of Chrome.

However, it is, as rendering and JS goes, _functionally_ a fork of Chrome,
since as you'll notice from the source you cited, it uses Chrome's "Blink"
rendering engine and Chrome's "V8" Javascript runtime.

Also from the link you cited:

>On 12 February 2013, Opera announced it would drop its own Presto engine in
favour of WebKit as implemented by Google's Chrome browser, using code from
the Chromium project. Opera Software also planned to contribute code to
WebKit.[29] On 3 April 2013, Google announced that it would fork components
from WebKit to form a new rendering engine known as Blink; the same day, Opera
confirmed that it would follow Google in implementing Blink.[30]

>

>On 28 May 2013, a beta release of Opera 15 was made available,[31] the first
version based on the Chromium project.[32][33] Many distinctive features of
the previous versions were dropped, and Opera Mail was separated into a
standalone application derived from Opera 12.[34]

------
jetru
Did this a few months ago. This is what happened: * No syncing history with
phone * No chromecast, literally had nothing to watch on TV * Even slower than
Chrome. Thought Firefox was supposed to be fast, but nope.

Switched back in days.

~~~
smt88
Firefox does both of the things you say it doesn't do[1][2]. Also, it's
strange that you had "literally nothing" to watch on TV because casting your
browser couldn't be mirrored onto the TV... what about Netflix, Hulu, etc.?

1\. [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-set-up-
firefox...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-set-up-firefox-sync)

2\. [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-firefox-android-
sen...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-firefox-android-send-videos-
chromecast)

~~~
psquid
Assuming I'm reading the parent post correctly, neither of those links
actually do what they would've been hoping for when moving browsers, even if
they certainly get closer than nothing.

Firefox Sync only syncs with versions of Firefox, and Chrome's sync only syncs
with versions of Chrome, so they'd have to switch mobile browsers too just
because they switched desktop browser (and unlike on desktop, I've found
Firefox for Android to generally be clunkier to use than Chrome for Android).

And that second link is about Chromecasting from Firefox for Android, not the
desktop browser. Being able to send stuff from desktop Chrome is definitely a
convenience someone could get accustomed to.

~~~
jetru
I own an iPhone and there's NO firefox on iOS. The benefits of having synced
history across every browser I use is pretty useful(Ex: that restaurant I
looked up online on my laptop this morning is going to show up pretty quickly
on my phone because it's in my Chrome history)

Also, Chromecast is just amazing. It works with Netflix, Hulu, YouTube etc.
Browse for videos on the website, because it's usually easier to click than to
do weird controller motions => chromecast. Back to coding. DONE.

I have no hard numbers or evidence for performance, but that was just my
feeling.

