Chrome

Google's Privacy Sandbox, particularly its Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC, had the grand ambition of making third-party cookies unnecessary for target advertising, thereby protecting people's privacy even while making money from them. Like many of Google's grand ambitions, FLoC was met with no small amount of criticism and pushback. The company still maintains its position on the benefits of FLoC and its innocence from alleged ulterior motives. To give time to address those concerns, it is taking a small step back and delaying FLoC's implementation to 2023.

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Incognito mode, which also goes by Safe Browsing or Private Browsing names, has become a common method these days for less technical users to protect themselves from online spying. The basic idea is that the browser won't keep a log of where users go and also block cookies that would let websites track users as well. As a lawsuit against Google indicates, that isn't a foolproof system and different browser makers might interpret the restrictions differently. All privacy also goes out the window when unauthorized persons have physical access, which is why Google is bringing Face ID security to Chrome on iOS.

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Gone are the days when people had to wait for ages to get updates for their phones and computers. Even Microsoft has switched to a more regular and shorter pace of two feature updates a year with lots of rolling updates in between. Software updates for certain apps are even more frequent, especially web browsers that need to keep up with the equally fast development of exploits and malware. That is why Google has shifted Chrome's release cycle to a four-week cadence and it is adopting the same pace for Chrome OS later this year.

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As the maker of the world's most-used web browser, Google has both a moral and maybe even legal obligation to protect the privacy and security of its users. Not all of its efforts have been welcomed without scrutiny, however, as shown by the Privacy Sandbox and FLoC, short for Federated Learning of Cohorts. Even before that, however, Google has been trying to fight off phishing scams by modifying what uses see on Chrome's address bar. It turns out that strategy wasn't as effective as it presumed and Google is now backtracking on the position it defended strongly last year.

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For the past few years, Google has been waging a war against web browser cookies, particularly third-party cross-site tracking ones that violate users' privacy outright. Of course, such cookies are also extensively used by advertising platforms, which means even Google has to find or create an alternative. That is exactly what its Privacy Sandbox and Federate Learning of Cohorts or FLoC are for and, unsurprisingly, they are earning no small amount of criticism for it. Google is now promising that it won't be violating its own rules but privacy advocates and rival ad tech companies still aren't buying it.

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Despite the obsolescence and, now, death of Flash, the Web has never been richer and more interactive. That's partly thanks to JavaScript, the much-maligned yet also widely-used programming language that powers the Web and many apps both on the Web and even on desktops. Its power doesn't come without a price, though, and JavaScript performance has always been the bane of web browsers, which is why Google is so proud of how it has made the latest Chrome release significantly faster and uses less memory, which will be music to users' ears.

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A lot of people rely on the Web these days not just to say informed or connected but also to work. Web browsers have become critical pieces of software on any platform, so when those break, the Internet is filled with complaints and demands for explanations. That is what transpired over the weekend when Google Chrome on Windows 10 started crashing left and right. Google did quickly push out a fix and its solution is just as strange as the bug it fixes.

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Google just announced an RSS feature for Google Chrome that'd allow users to follow blogs with ease. This is like a very tiny, limited part of the deal that was Google Reader, before Google ended service with the RSS aggregator in the year 2013 after approximately 8 years of service to the public. Now Google is once again "building on the open RSS web standard."

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Almost eight years ago, Google retired its Google Reader service much to the dismay of its many users. Reasons presented for its demise varied but most of those revolved around how the open yet outdated RSS format has seemingly gone out of fashion in lieu of social media. Of course, RSS feeds are still alive and kicking and, almost ironically, Google is playing around with a Chrome feature that acknowledges that while somewhat bringing Google Reader back as a built-in feature in the web browser.

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Today we're taking a peek at what Google revealed on day 1 of Google I/O 2021. This is generally the day when Google reveals the bulk of their public-facing news for devices and software, and this year was no different in that respect. Google reminded the world that their heart is in organizing the world's information and making said data valuable to all users, starting with a conversation with a paper airplane.

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This week Google I/O 2021 is scheduled to deliver new news about Google, Android, Chrome, and everything in-between. In less than 24 hours from the moment this article is set to be published, Google I/O 2021 will begin, starting with a keynote address. This year, Google suggests they'll focus on their mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

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Despite being perhaps the world's most popular web browser, Google Chrome is also notorious for being a resource hog, especially when it comes to memory and battery. Some also feel that Chrome can be a bit slow or even sluggish, especially as the number of tabs and sites you've been to grows. Of course, Google has also taken steps to make Chrome on desktops faster and its latest trick will be to make the pages you've been to load faster by keeping them longer in the browser's cache.

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