AT&T's Internet-streaming live TV service will soon be exclusive to the Chrome browser, assuming you prefer to stream on your laptop or desktop. Users are reporting seeing a message when attempting to stream on PC that advises them to download and install Google Chrome, saying it is necessary in order to get the 'best streaming experience.' You have until the end of this month to make the transition.
Back in April, we reported on sources that claimed Google was going to bake an ad-blocker directly into its Chrome browser, something that would block advertisements deemed to be intrusive and/or disruptive for visitors. Google has confirmed that report today, shedding light on a crucial detail that was missing the first time around: Chrome will block all advertisements on a website that doesn't adhere to Better Ads Standards.
It's kind of hard to imagine that Google would have much more to announce after yesterday's I/O keynote, but today the company was back for a second presentation. Today was all about VR, which stands in stark comparison to yesterday, which only seemed to make mention of VR at the end. Though there were some interesting reveals made, one of the cooler ones revolves around Chrome and its future on VR headsets.
As much as Google, and users, probably want it, Internet connection still isn't as ubiquitous or stable everywhere. At one point or another, Wi-Fi or data will break, leaving you with an inaccessible web page when you might need it the most. That is unless you're on Android and are using Chrome's offline feature. Already a year old, Google is taking offline web pages a step further by making it easier to download web pages even without opening them.
Today we're having our first look at the project code-named Google Fuchsia - a mobile OS that departs from Android and Chrome. While Google's Chrome OS and Android OS were both based on Linux, Fuchsia is not. Fuchsia OS is based on Google's own "Magenta" microkernel, not to be confused with the Google AI music project of the same name. Fuchsia is all about speed, performance, and beauty.
Google is planning to add a built-in ad-blocker to Chrome, according to sources, and it will target the Internet's most obnoxious types of advertisements. These sub-standard advertisements include things like videos that automatically start playing and advertisements that won't disappear until a long countdown timer is finished. The sources indicate that Google hasn't ironed out all of the details yet, and that it may not ultimately go through with the feature.
Today is a big day for Google Earth, as Google has delivered a large update that adds a lot of new features. In fact, the update is so big and packs in so many features that Google is prompted to call it "the new Google Earth." Indeed, there's a lot to explore, so let's get down to it.
Isn't it just annoying when you're in the middle of reading a rather engrossing web page only to have it suddenly jump back to the top or elsewhere? In this day and age of the modern web, websites still have a problem of jumping content, which, ironically, is a side effect of technologies designed to actually make the web more efficient. To make the web a better place, Google has added a new feature to Chrome called scroll anchoring to keep what you're currently seeing locked in place.
There recently was a mini browser war between Microsoft and Opera that revolved around power consumption. While the two naturally didn’t see eye to eye on who used up less power, they seem to implicitly agree on who was the worst offender: Google Chrome. Unsurprisingly, Google fired off its own retort but it also admits there’s still work to be done. In version 57 of Chrome, part of that work has been implemented by taking down abusive Javascript timers down a notch.
Google is further blurring the line between local apps and web apps in Android, rolling out the ability to add Progressive Web Apps to the homescreen but with the speed of a regular app. A feature of Chrome, the new functionality is currently only available in Chrome Canary - the most cutting-edge of versions for developers - but will be rolling out to Chrome 57 beta over the next few weeks, Google says. The upshot for users, so the promise goes, is apps that have the visibility of locally-installed software but the flexibility of online services.
This week the folks at Google have updated the iOS (and soon the Android) version of the Chrome web browser. This update uses the camera of the device it's running on to locate and scan QR codes as well as bar codes. This update essentially does away with the need for that additional QR and barcode scanner app that's been sitting unused or barely used in our app drawers for years.
Google's Chrome web browser has been brought to the open source universe thanks to years of upstreaming work by its developers. Google historically kept the code for Chrome for iOS separate from the Chromium project because of what they call "constraints on the iOS platform." With iOS for iPhone and iPad, all web browsers are required to have been built on top of the WebKit rendering engine - Google just made it possible to skip that worry.
