Google smears Chrome on 'sacred' home page
When an army of angry American watchdogs barked for a one-word privacy link on the Google home page, the search giant refused. At least initially. And when it finally acquiesced a month later, it did so only after carefully removing another word from the page. The way head Googirl Marissa Mayer tells it, the Google home page …
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I could 38 words...
I count 38 words on the page, excluding those on the drop-down menu under "more" and including the words on the search buttons. So I guess i'm counting it wrong?
Paris because she only knows 28 words.
Good eye!
They sure made a fuss over the Privacy link... since they have no problem with the Chrome link...
I hereby dub Google, "emo".
This story reminds me of...
... the old saying:
'You can't polish a turd'
Bill, 'coz if anyone knows about turds it's him. Well, maybe Steve... or Paris. Let's not go there, though.
Re: Can't polish a turd
You can gild one though, and call it Turd Vista.
You CAN Polish Turd
It just needs to be frozen...
IT Angle? If you are creative enough you can find a solution to any problem, although in the process you're likely setting yourself up for a bigger mess later!
>:->
Outstanding
ThankYouThankYouThankYou, Metz!!! Outstanding bit of public protection ... saving us all from Google's evilness. Had I not read this excellent article, I might have gone a whole day without reading anything about Google. Thank you for keeping your eagle eye on that dastardly company. Simply outstanding detective work, and I couldn't have found a more important issue to write about. Blessing on you.
Not necessarily between people
The conflict could be between the multiple personalities of a single individual within Google. But it's more fun to imagine the arguments that have ensued between the suits and the furry-toothed.
Don't be evil
But do be hyprocritical.
Nice one google...!
Steven R
@AC - You CAN polish Turd
>You CAN Polish Turd
>It just needs to be frozen...
Spot the engineer! Indeed, after freezing, you can polish one.
But <Dilbert>
* Sealing it inside a shell of some sort (e.g. lamination), although it's a bit of a cheat because you'll actually be polishing the shell.
* Allow it to fossilise - they can be polished
* Baking to remove the water could give a polish-able surface
* Application of a caking agent could harden the surface
</Dilbert>
I'm sure there are more, although all of them are partly dependent on Curry/Chilli/Guiness intake as well...
I've made a career
out of polishing turds. As a contract programmer, I've regularly been handed the software equivalent of a turd at the start of a new contract and been told to polish it. I am a turd polisher and all I have to show for it is a very dirty duster.
@ I could 38 words...
I counted 40, not including the 'TM' or the '(c)2008'.
Go me! I am awesome at counting! Woo yeah!
Why does google suggest I download Chrome...
when I'm already using the Chrome browser to view their site? Even the basic coding on my own humble web site is able to determine what browser version is viewing it.
Polish a what now...?
I'm all for over the top derisiveness in the name of smug self satisfaction - but chrome a turd? I think not... Chrome rocks! Within a couple of days it has completely replaced firefox in my daily life (although I do miss adBloc).
OR....
spray with lacquer, gives a nice finish.
or the old joke of the old man with the magic liquid, bacon grease over the top and in the morning its gone.
Outrageous
What's that you say? A commercial company is using its own website to further its commercial aims? Disgusting.
Well done El Reg for exposing this despicable tactic
Ahem!
My comment of 5th September made this precise point:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/04/chrome_review/comments/#c_311290
You, sirrah, shall be hearing from my lawyers, assuming of course they're not sucked into a black hole at 08:30 this morning ...
you mean like last time
so this story is about Google advertising one of its new products on the home page. Just like it did with iGoogle and various others, and basically couldn't be more un-newsworthy.
but i guess i'm posting a comment, making my whole argument fubar.
To be honest..
Didnt even notice the link.
But so what if they did.. still fuk'in loads quicker than just about any other company homepage out there.
*\. Mines the one getting on with its life.
This is nothing new?
Rather than echoing some of the sentiments up above, pointing out that their a company with a product, and that this isn't worth of a news article (oh look, I did echo them!), I thought I'd say something new...
Haven't google always done this? Big product launch, little link under the search box. For things like the Google Talk launch, etc etc?
Umm...
Did nobody actually READ the article where they were talking about having only 28 words?
"(That's the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there's no promotional line running beneath the search box, you've set Google as your homepage and thus don't get the "Make Google Your Homepage!" link, and you count "©2008 Google" as two words.)"
Seeing as they're promoting Chrome, I'd think that this qualifies as a "Promotional line"
Polishing mersey goldfish
Gentlemen and ladies of the comments section, I draw your attention to Dr Guff's finest turd polish :-
http://www.guffsturdpolish.com/
They can do whatever they like
It's their homepage, their browser, their company.
They can break the 'rules' whenever they like, why is this story upsetting people?
on a roll...
getting to the point where you can afford to make a few screw ups and not making any: fail.
Re: Why does google suggest I download Chrome...
"when I'm already using the Chrome browser to view their site? Even the basic coding on my own humble web site is able to determine what browser version is viewing it."
I expect Chrome is just pretending to be Internet Explorer. If you listen to Firefox and Opera weenies, all browsers pretty much *have* to pretend to be IE because all web servers refuse to serve pages to any other, and the UK.gov does a survey to decide which browsers they have to support and, ooo lookie here, everyone is using IE.
The "user-agent" feature has to be the single biggest design flaw in HTTP. Initially, it facilitates non-standard features. Eventually, it forces everyone to lie to the server. Neither is a terribly great design feature for a network protocol.
Marissa Mayer is hot
...which is the only reason I forgave her rather self-important and facile 28 words article. And to be fair, we can also discount this Reg article, as one of her caveats for the 28 is:
"there's no promotional line running beneath the search box"
There is, so there can be more than 28. Write a proper article, please.
Wow, I'm irritable today.
Wow.
Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. Run out of ways to run down Google? Never mind, you'll think of some more soon.
Ooh ooh! It's the anti-Google backlash bandwagon, hurrah!
The story is about double standards, not whether it is acceptable for Google to hawk its wares on its own front page. If Google hadn't made such a song and dance about the privacy link _then_ this would be a non-story.
@ James Butler
It's difficult to convey sarcasm in writing. Without the benefit of tonal inflection one often must resort to chipping away at it, rather like squashing ants with a toffee hammer. But you sir, you managed it in a mere sixty-odd words. Hats off to you!
Using Chrome
Have to admit to using Chrome as well. It loads faster than firefox and with less ...errrmm .. chrome. The main reason I changed from Opera to Firefox in the first place.
The security of the product I couldn't care less about as I am at work and that is an SEP. AdBlock would be nice, but the limited web sites I will visit are not that ad heavy.
It doesn't seem to parse our Intranet very well, but then thats a pile of smeggy M$ Sharepoint.
@James Butler
I was going to say something along those lines myself but I would never have managed to make my point as exceptionally as you did.
Thanks for doing my bit and meaning I just have to highlight someone else's work.
turd polishing
On the note of turd polishing - you invariably end up with shit on your hands.
However, if you chrome something, then all the nastyness is incased in a highly shiny bubble. Thus preventing people from seeing what is on the inside...
@Cade Metz
What the hell? Did Google sleep with your sister, or something?
Why is there no "rate this article" on this article?
It would have allowed commenters to quantitively be quantified and the wordless ones who cba commenting could also be counted too...
?????????????????
@Ken Hagan, David harris
@Ken
It identifies itself more closely to Safari (obvious really) than IE, but still you can identify it properly so that's no excuse:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.29 Safari/525.13
@David
I was wondering the same thing. I'd guess it's a fairly harmless but nasty tasting 'Rainman' type gag about how autistics are all really really really rule bound or something. Considering El Reg's target audience, I'd have thought it was a pretty dumb slur to make, no?
So what's the problem?
So what if they advertise their product. isn't that what firefox does on it's site, opera on it's and IE on M$. really what does it matter. a new browser is coming. hopefully better than the rest. so far it's a pretty good browser. oh and get this, it's still in it's first beta stage. FF is in past it's release and still has rendering issue. EI, well geez. I am not even going to get started on that one. As far as 28 words go. Who cares how many words their are. what laws say they can't change that. It's web page for information. that is what they offered. INFO ON THE NEW PRODUCT. oh and it's free!!!! Stop whining about something so trivial
so you don't get the joke...
OK, you don't GET IT. It was a funny double-standard joke.
But then to go overboard in Google's defense. Classic!
polish this turd
by setting it's standard search to msn.
it's like combining the false prophet and the beast...
Speaking of polishing turds... [tangent]
How about this? Migrate a database where:
1) Users are authenticated against a plain-text "users" table. To "protect" this, the table has no access rights assigned to it. To allow authentication to this "no rights" table, the front end has hard-coded into it a SQL login with SA rights.
2) Rather than link tables or use stored procedures, the Access front end uses queries on the fly of the type: "Select * from {database.table ]user=[aboveaccountwithSArights] pw=[twowordpasswordassignedtoabove]" - again, hard coded into the front end.
3) Front end is an Access .mde file and the "developer" did not leave the .mdb. So the code is all compiled and we don't have the source.
Alas the so-called "developer" is long gone, or I would stuff my turd-polishing rag down his throat so far it would polish his turds as well.
Word count...
Once I've signed out of Google, I count:
Links at top of page - 10
Surrounding the search box - 12 (or 17 if you include the buttons)
Bottom links - 9
Footer - 2
Total: 33 (38)
Sign in to iGoogle and the top links section increases to 14 words (if you count your email address as one). Then ignoring your custom content, there's another 14 words to add (Home, Add a tab, Get Artist Themes | Select Theme | Add Stuff >>, About this theme).
Total: 51 (56)
So perhaps a more accurate magic number would be 75 words?
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