Well, Google shouldn’t have unleashed Chrome onto the masses and open up millions of computer to cyber criminals. It’s still a beta with the version number 0.2. Go figure!

According to the Bkis Security BLog, there is a critical vulnerability which lets hackers perform a devious attack and take control of the targeted computer system.

A proof of concept of the exploits (which opens the Calculator) can be seen on the Bkis Security Blog.

Furthermore, Matthias Gärtner, the spokesman of the German Bundesamt for Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) is quoted in many German national newspaper today with

Google Chrome sollte nicht für den allgemeinen Gebrauch eingesetzt werden (Google Chrome shouldn’t be used for general [internet] usage.)

and because of the incorporation of search functions, e-mail, webbased textwriting etc.:

Aus sicherheitstechnischen Gründen ist die Anhäufung von Daten bei einem Anbieter kritisch. (Because of the security-relevant reasons, the accumulation of data at one supplier is critical.)

Despite fixing all bugs and exploits in Google Chrome, I agree with the assessment of the BSI. Well, I would say everyone accumulating data, being them corporations or even state departments or anyone else, is a risk to your personal data security and privacy. So be careful with whom you share your data.

Google has removed the questionable parts of the EULA I outlined in my post from yesterday.

The Terms of Service now state:

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

12. Software updates

Good move in my opinion.

Source: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

Think about what this means for anything you do with the browser.

Bye bye Chrome!

A more in depth discussion about this can be found on TapTheHive.

The carpet-bombing flaw known to exist with Safari 3.1 (and was patched by Apple in their update to 3.1.2) does affect Google Chrome Beta because it’s using an older version of the WebKit engine.

So I only can advise people not to use Google Chrome Beta at the moment.

Read more at ZDNet’s security blog with a link to a harmless proof-of-concept demo.

Today I installed Google Chrome Beta on our Windows Vista testmachine in our office. No Chrome for Macs yet.

What bugs me: you only get a web downloader and not the full install files. So you have no real control what happens behind the scenes when you install the browser.

Otherwise the installation went smooth. Well, after installation, I was greeted by a German browser, with no possibility to convert Chrome to have an English interface. For some people it is certainly sufficient to have apps install in their native language, but at least I would like to choose the language of the software I use (I prefer British English).

Chrome renders websites fast, really fast. That’s impressive. It obviously has a Flash plugin already embedded, as Flash apps, Youtube etc. work out of the box without problems. I have no idea what the guys and gals at spiegel.de test, because they wrote “we surfed the net for two hours and didn’t find a site which was not working”. Well, it took me just five minutes to find out Chrome doesn’t have a Java plugin nor a possibility to get an appropriate plugin to display the Wordle-website.

Normal HTML-rendering looks good and seems to be really standards compliant (well, should be when using the WebKit engine). And the speed of the rendering is really impressive. Faster than Safari and a lot faster than Firefox. That’s really impressive for a beta version.

The interface of Chrome is reduced and slick. At the moment it looks a bit like a clone of Opera.

I really hope there will be adblockers available, but I guess not, because Google lives from web marketing.

So I will only use Google Chrome as a test browser (like I do with Internet Explorer). At least for my personal preference Firefox is still the better choice: I have control over what the programme does and can adjust the browser to my liking (e.g. web developer’s toolbar, ad blockers like NoScript etc.).

Google obviously launches a new browser today: Google Chrome (see their blog for more news).

I am not sure I like this. I still remember the old days of web design and web development, when you had to make sure your website ran ok on all different sorts of browsers. I guess everybody remembers those nasty “optimised for Internet Explorer 4.0” taglines on website frontpages. The war between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator and their different implementations of Web Standards didn’t ease our work.

At least I hope Google values Web Standards and basing their browser on parts of Firefox’ and Webkit’s technology will hopefully mean it will adhere to correct Web Standards implementations.

In my eyes there is no need for just another browser, but well, we will see if it works out. But I guess it will be a browser strongly tied to the Google brand and technologies and thus another tool from a monopolistic company.