19 ms·

Chrome Is Bad

651 points by basisword 6y ago

colordrops 6y ago
Found an old thread involving the Google Keystone tech lead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21065504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21065504
- vlovich123 6y ago
  This is why dates on articles is so important. I can’t tell if this website is newer or older than that response so I can’t tell if this is a problem today or was a problem that was resolved
  - terracatta 6y ago
    The only clue this domain might be newer is he mentions the 16inch MacBook Pro which first came out in 2019.
  - jonsully 6y ago
    Appears website is newer - https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/1337832978253230081 https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/1337832978253230081
    - mortenjorck 6y ago
      Huh. Chromeisbad.com doesn't have an author credit, but the tweet implies it's by notable iOS developer Loren Brichter, creator of Tweetie, Letterpress, and inventor of pull-to-refresh.
      - lorenb 6y ago
        Yeah, it felt weird to put my name on it, people usually do that when they have something to sell. Someone mentioned that it seems sketchy being anonymous so I'll probably sign it. There's no upside for me either way.
        tripzilch 6y ago
        Hopefully the upside has been learning to do a bit more investigation, provide a bit more evidence, before registering a domain for your theory and submitting to HN :)
        lorenb 6y ago
        I didn't submit it or write it for this crowd.
- eduardb 6y ago
  That is about a different bug involving Keystone :)
indymike 6y ago
Should be called "Keystone, part of Chrome, appears to behave badly on my Mac." There's nothing like this running on my Linux box.
Exuma 6y ago
It sucks because Chrome is so much better usability wise than all those others. I wish they would just fix whatever this keystone trash is, and leave that to stonehenge
- tomaskafka 6y ago
  I found out, surprised, that current Edge is basically a better Chrome - even compatible with all extensions, faster, and with lower battery consumption. And, yes, Microsoft AutoUpdate, which however seems reasonable so far.
  - ivank 6y ago
    Edge is missing E2E encryption in the sync feature.
    - alyandon 6y ago
      Yep - pretty critical missing bit of functionality unfortunately.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  What does Chrome do better than Safari?
  - The_Colonel 6y ago
    Runs on my computer. (not a big fan of chrome though)
    - LeoPanthera 6y ago
      Well that's a great answer. ;) It's kind of a shame that Apple killed off the Windows version of Safari. I often wonder if they would consider bringing it back.
  - terramex 6y ago
    For me - it works properly on spotty connections. I have fast, but unreliable internet that drops connection few times an hour and Safari and Firefox are almost unusable - when connection drops for just a few seconds they cannot open many websites for up to 5 minutes (reddit, google and youtube among many others; hacker news is one of the few that work all the time). Chromium based browsers do not have that issue, I used to use Vivaldi but temporarily switched to Safari as I wait for ARM build of Vivaldi and I am constantly frustrated by that issue. I have tried debugging it but got nowhere, it seems to be system wide issue as some 3rd party apps exhibit this behaviour too (for example live streaming through IINA or Skype) while others not (Electron based apps usually work fine). Recently switched to new M1 Macbook and it happens on it too.
A7med 6y ago
no thanks
imperialdrive 6y ago
The PC equivalent is the 'reporter' process? App locker really comes in handy for such a thing. I used Chrome for so long but it was Firefox containers that finally forced me to switch and never look back.
- arendtio 6y ago
  You probably mean 'Windows equivalent'. Many people don't care, but it really is a bad habit to use 'Windows' and 'PC' ambivalently. Yes, Windows is the dominant OS for the PC, but there are others as well.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Just use Firefox If you want to be sure your stuff works across browsers, test in safari Don’t support or trust ad companies to deliver technology, their interests are always misaligned with the user
- meibo 6y ago
  Safari is arguably the worst browser to do general tests in if you're not making iOS apps, as it has a history of rendering and behaving differently than any other browser. The dev tools are also unusable compared to Chrome.
  - littlestymaar 6y ago
    I think you misunderstood the GP's comment. They aren't advocating to work with Safari, but to work with Firefox then to test with Safari. If it works in Safari after being developed in Firefox, it's likely to work everywhere.
    - marczellm 6y ago
      FWIW I haven't found that to be the case with something as simple as making an image autoresize.
      - sbarre 6y ago
        Then you can keep a Chromium-based browser like Brave around for some additional testing, even if it's not your daily driver.
  - fiatjaf 6y ago
    By "any other" you mean Chrome and Firefox?
- iso1631 6y ago
  A generation ago people used to say "as long as it works in IE6 then that's all you need, who cares about other browsers" Now it's Chrome, but it's the same danger.
ttul 6y ago
Any actual evidence of the performance impact? This seems thinly supported by evidence.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  I think evidence of functional impact might be just as appropriate. If removing keystone doesn’t harm the user, and may make the computer faster; why would anyone leave it at all?
johnghanks 6y ago
Chrome is fine this is dramatic.
sweetlucipher 6y ago
I'm gonna try this. Thank you.
- rafaelturk 6y ago
  Me too..
- joshspankit 6y ago
  Anyone who does: Please consider doing a video of the process and results, or some other proof. It would be awesome to get traction on this, but there needs to be undeniable evidence first.
sneak 6y ago
Chrome's security is, however, light years ahead of anyone else's; it remains the sole reason I still use it. It's possible to use Little Snitch to deny Keystone/ksupdate all network access, which is what I do, which removes the Google RCE vulnerability it places on your machine. Make sure to periodically manually update Chrome, however.
- aflag 6y ago
  What evidence do you have to back up that claim?
  - HelloThur 6y ago
    In the security industry it's commonly known Chrome has the best security, this partly due to the amount of money Google invests in finding vulnerabilities (via fuzzing) in Chrome. For "proof", you can check how much exploit vendors pay for exploits for each browser. For example Zerodium offer: * $500k for Chrome RCE * $100k for Safari RCE * $100k for Firefox RCE https://zerodium.com/program.html https://zerodium.com/program.html The higher amount would generally indicate its harder to get an RCE in Chrome.
    - jsmith99 6y ago
      Or perhaps that Chrome exploits are more useful? In fact, given Firefox's tiny market share (despite my efforts) I'm surprised the disparity isn't higher. Maybe it's harder to find Firefox exploits? It's more likely that more popular browsers equally have more people attempting to crack them; and software in general is so buggy that results probably scale in proportion to the number of people looking.
      - HelloThur 6y ago
        Thats a valid point if we're referring to relatively unknown browsers. But the main three browsers are all high profile enough that they all have significant eyes on them and are thoroughly tested. Firefox may have a small market share, but exploits for Firefox may even have more value to some entities/governments, due to its use in Tor Browser. To clear any confusion, all three are extremely secure in comparison to other types of products (which is why exploits are so expensive), however Chrome just edges ahead, due to its sandboxing, and rapid patch cycle.
awinter-py 6y ago
the linked 2009 wired article quotes adobe saying 'yeah we don't see the need to have an always-on updater process' fast forward to 2020 when (1) adobe has this and (2) they still email me every so often to remind me to install their software which (3) I have installed and been using I think life would be better if there were a 3rd-party update service that wasn't trying to also own marketing + distribution (i.e. take 15-30% of the sale and also maintain platform dominance). A tool that was 'just updates' so my other software doesn't get to install a rootkit.
- DaSilentStorm 6y ago
  Like homebrew maybe? ;-)
  - awinter-py 6y ago
    homebrew is non-commercial and updates on-run, rather than in the background, but frankly yes if they had a commercial offering I think they have the brand trust to make this work
    - inimino 6y ago
      They have that trust because all the software installed by homebrew is open source.
      - leipert 6y ago
        Not necessarily all open source, homebrew-cask has been merged into brew and you have e.g. Jetbrains IDEs and Zoom available. Personally I use homebrew-cask to manage almost all applications and their updates, turning auto-updating off in almost all apps. That way I am in control and can update when it is convenient, know if an update broke something, etc. Edit, using: - https://github.com/buo/homebrew-cask-upgrade https://github.com/buo/homebrew-cask-upgrade - https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle
- akkartik 6y ago
comex 6y ago
This is total nonsense. Even for malware, hiding from Activity Monitor would be quite a feat. Short of an exploit, you couldn't hide your process without a kernel rootkit, but macOS has required user approval to load kernel extensions for several versions now. I suppose you could go the low-tech way and just name your process "WindowServer" to confuse the user, but you'd still end up with two WindowServers. The idea that Chrome's auto-updater is doing this is ludicrous.
- bfgoodrich 6y ago
  Chrome does have the capacity for screen sharing (e.g. Chrome Remote Desktop), but I assume it wouldn't inject any extensions into the window server unless it was actively invoked.
- masswerk 6y ago
  I remember quite well the Google update process being notorious for evading Little Snitch firewall rules. It popped up every intervall as if it were a new (unseen) process. There's definitely something going on with the app signature. (Haven't used Chrome for some time by now.)
  - comex 6y ago
    I am curious why that happens. From some Googling it seems like the updater copies itself to a random directory each time it runs [1], and I guess Little Snitch classifies programs by their full path, so it sees it as a new program each time. Copying itself is odd and probably suboptimal behavior, but it is explainable without assuming malice: my guess is that it’s related to some kind of “before we update let’s update the updater” bootstrapping logic. I could be wrong, but IIRC the updater code is open source, so it should be easy to find out. [Edit: Oops, it's actually not open source. Their Windows updater (Omaha) is open source, but their Mac one (Keystone) is not. Of course, one can still open the binaries in a decompiler.] Regardless, moving a program around on disk, or even deleting the program while it’s running (which is possible on macOS), would not prevent it from showing up in Activity Monitor. [1] http://www.reecefowell.com/2012/11/16/ksfetch-annoyance-on-mac-os-x-10-8-ml-with-hands-off-or-little-snitch-firewall/ http://www.reecefowell.com/2012/11/16/ksfetch-annoyance-on-m...
kgwxd 6y ago
Is there anything like this going on on Linux? I don't really use it, but I have it in case I need to do dev testing.
- SXX 6y ago
  Fortunatelly on Linux it's just using standard repositories.
  - rhencke 6y ago
    Yes... except the Chrome package adds updating itself to your cron scripts without telling you. :/
    - fctorial 6y ago
      And it can update itself without sudo?
      - rhencke 6y ago
        Yes, since the cron script automatically runs as root on a repeating schedule. If you want to see what it does: mkdir junk cd junk wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb ar x google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb tar xf data.tar.xz cat opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome It's not nefarious - it's well-documented and explained. It's just making a decision for me that, as an administrator, I need to be the one deciding instead.
        greatgib 6y ago
        That is very bad. With this they can easily and covertly target an ip and deploy automatically a rooted version to infiltrate a specific computer. That looks like crazy theory, but tell me what they will do if the nsa request it?
        alacombe 6y ago
        % ls /opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome ls: cannot access '/opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome': No such file or directory
meibo 6y ago
The author should probably note that not updating Chrome is a very bad idea. There's a good reason for automated updates on a web browser for the general public and there's a good reason why Chrome is the most secure browser on the market.
- fiatjaf 6y ago
  And that reason is...
- vfclists 6y ago
  Using Chrome itself is very bad idea. There is fundamental reason why internet standards should not be dictated by a data-collection/advertising company. Try getting that across to the nerds who constantly whinge about Google. The Internet was designed to share information, not to provide a medium for delivering proprietary applications. Perhaps it should go back to its original goal, or people should be educated on other alternatives.
- matsemann 6y ago
  It could autoupdate when running/on launch though. No idea why Google litters my system with weird backgroundtasks, unless it's to get a few more datapoints on me..
paulnechifor 6y ago
Looks like this is just a Windows/OS 10 trojan. These sort of bullshit software issues usually come the the territory.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fortran77 6y ago
  This is a Mac only problem. He was talking about Macs, not Windows.
ignoranceprior 6y ago
Does this apply to Ungoogled Chromium too?
vesche 6y ago
The author went so far as to create a domain for this rant, and yet didn't even do any performance metrics or basic forensic analysis at all. I'm not saying the author is wrong, but there's a lot of questions here. How does Keystone hide itself from the Activity Monitor? Is there a Keystone process if you run `ps aux`? Did you run dtruss/strace? What is it doing when Chrome isn't running that causes it to degrade performance?
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  I'm quite impressed by that “chromeisbad” as a domain was not already taken.
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    Yeah. After reading your comment I tried out a couple of similar domains on the form x is bad and x is good and they were both parked waiting for someone to pay whatever ridiculous price the owner is wanting to demand to sell it. I wish it was illegal to do that.
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      If it weren't legal, then someone would simply use it for a trivial website and then sell it. Perhaps that is the only reason this simple, trivial article exists.
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      Somewhat related: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comput... * https://www.thedrive.com/news/35179/the-man-who-fought-nissan-over-a-website-and-won-has-died-of-covid-19 https://www.thedrive.com/news/35179/the-man-who-fought-nissa...
  - libria 6y ago
    With the amount of rebuttals in this thread, I'm impressed `chromeisgood.com` isn't taken.
jansan 6y ago
Not sure about this Keystone, but the Chrome Software Reporter Tool keeps annoying me A LOT. It frequently causes high CPU load and at least the last time I checked I could not find a proper documentation on what it is or does.
morphicpro 6y ago
Keystone is the hidden nefarious program that apple installs as its been clearly stated to convert intel into arm code lol
- rhencke 6y ago
  You are thinking of Rosetta.
qz2 6y ago
To make an argument of this scale you have the burden of proof. There is no proof here past casual correlation. An analogy I see here is the scene from an old film where a woman walks behind a wooden screen and a goose walks out thus the woman is a shape shifting witch.
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  >>To make an argument of this scale you have the burden of proof. There is no proof here past casual correlation. And yet, as of this writing, it has 200+ upvotes and is at the top of the front page. HN audience really needs to do better. If you are reading this and are one of the people who upvoted the story, please really ask yourself why.
  - qz2 6y ago
    Oh this is normal. People upvote the title, then comment, then read it if the comments aren’t agreeing with their preconception. Humans are a mess of a species.
    - epakai 6y ago
      Sounds like a design issue. Why does the front page have an upvote button if we expect people to read the post/article first?
      - qz2 6y ago
        Interesting point. Perhaps if you click through the upvote button shouldn’t appear until 5 minutes later?
      - Ma8ee 6y ago
        Because some people check the linked article only and might never look at the comments.
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      There isn't a website on the planet that allows for votes where it doesn't very often happen that they provide a viewport into the boundless stupidity of the human species. I wonder how H.N. and similar websites would work if ranking was purely a function of activity and not of votes — simply push to the top whichever branch of the tree has the last reply so highly debated news is statistically more often at the top, but whichever link had the last reply somewhere will be currently at the top.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
Hm. I figure I'll give it a try. I have stability/slowdown issues, but I don't attribute it to anything more than I'm a native software/device control developer, and often running dodgy, hacked-together tools. I generally have to do a "deep cleaning" of my system once a year or so. I do often have a windowserver hang. I don't really use Chrome much (just for testing, or the odd times that a site won't work on Safari). Not a big deal for me to rip it out. If it were a tool that I use all the time, though, I might be more comfortable with a posting that had a bit more detail.
Thaxll 6y ago
"Safari is good" haha ...
g0atbutt 6y ago
I've had noticeable issues with "WindowServer" in the past (taking 80% CPU usage and causing the fans to ramp up even when the system seemed like it should be idling even after a reboot) so I decided to give this a shot. This is anecdotal but there is a noticeable difference for me with responsiveness after following these steps. Currently the WindowServer process is hovering around 14%.
- Siyo 6y ago
  Most likely the issue was resolved by the reboot, not by uninstalling Chrome. From my experience Mac OS tends to slow down after a few days. Animations and scrolling gets choppy and there's nothing I can do to fix it, short of rebooting.
  - g0atbutt 6y ago
    I can assure you that it wasn't related just to rebooting as this has been something that's been bugging me for months. I had previously rebooted earlier in the day because of this exact same issue (a runaway WindowServer process), before I saw this article. I also did a fresh reboot before following these instructions too as a sort of "control". The change only happened for me after removing Chrome as well as the launch agent for keystone.
  - masswerk 6y ago
    > From my experience Mac OS tends to slow down after a few days Just for the sake of the argument, do you have installed Chrome?
  - worik 6y ago
    Yes. Just like Linux - in 1996. Very sad. (I have recently started using Apple tools for developping with Swift/Xcode on iPad. I am very unimpressed by the quality of the tools, and quite impressed by the range and depth of features....)
  - thewebcount 6y ago
    I use macOS daily for months at a time without rebooting and have not seen this problem on any of the 5 Macs I've been using for the past several years, for what that's worth. It does seem like it's something specific to your machine.
systemvoltage 6y ago
The window to the internet should not be some monster that takes millions of developer hours and held ransom by a couple of big companies. I should be able to build my own browser in a 3 month sabbatical.
- worik 6y ago
  The Internet is much bigger than the Interweb.
- sbarre 6y ago
  > The window to the internet This exact part of your comment is why big companies are fighting so hard to own and gatekeep web browsers.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    > big companies are fighting so hard to own and gatekeep web browsers could you expand on this? Which big companies are you referring to?
    - collinvandyck76 6y ago
      Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google
      - marcus_holmes 6y ago
        Well, Microsoft gave up and are using Google's browser. And Mozilla just downsized the Firefox team (and they're paid by Google to keep Firefox going, basically). And Safari is only ever a presence on Apple computers, which Apple already control completely. It's not really a huge competition...
        sbarre 6y ago
        Microsoft Edge is not "Google's browser". It uses the Chromium rendering engine but it's still developed and distributed by Microsoft, which means they own the telemetry, the features, the defaults, and the user experience (which are the parts that matter, no one cares about the renderer from a business POV). Google has Chrome, we've covered that already. Apple has Safari. Firefox exists, and is only funded by Google - in my opinion - to fend off anti-trust at this point. Just because Google has more or less won the browser wars doesn't mean all those other companies wouldn't _love_ to regain market share in the future. And perhaps they will. Owning that window is hugely valuable and lucrative, so why wouldn't they?
ma2rten 6y ago
This must be how things like some alternative medicine and anti-vax start: Things like feeling healthy and your computer being slow can be very subjective. The author appears to be technical enough to know that there is something called keystone on his computer, but not technical enough to benchmark and investigate further. The name keystone sounds kind of nefarious, so it makes sense that someone would be able to convince themselves that it makes their computer slower.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Well yeah, because "my kid has autism and his also got a vaccine so obviously that's the reason my kid got autism" is exactly how it gets started because they heard about that paper (or rumors thereof) that has been debunked a 1000 times over in the medical literature but now it's a part of folklore and almost impossible to kill like other superstitions.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
A lot of skeptical comments in this thread. I'm not low-level enough to confirm or deny the specific claims in the article. I will say that my experience with regards to CPU performance "leaks" and Chrome seeming to always be running in the background even when I didn't want it to, as well as Chrome starting up on system startup when there didn't seem to be any references to it anywhere I'd expect to cause that, are consistent with the article. I saw a lot of "low-level integration" with my system going on, a lot more than I understood, ever wanted or asked for, and there was no way I knew of to turn it off. It was like IE on Windows all over again. I was also able to solve the issues by removing Chrome from my systems. I sometimes install it temporarily to do Web testing and remove it shortly afterwards, but I think I'll do that in a VM from now on.
- comex 6y ago
  What is running in the background/on startup, Chrome itself or its updater? And is this on macOS or another platform?
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    This was on Mac OS X when it was still stylized that way. Chrome itself would run on system startup. I no longer use that system, and don't remember the details well enough.
  - boatsie 6y ago
    Chrome can/does definitely run in the background if you have chrome Remote Desktop enabled. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had a daemon always running in case you want to enable Remote Desktop.
    - comex 6y ago
      I just tested it. Setting up Chrome Remote Desktop requires installing a separate package which Chrome downloads for you. When it's enabled, there are indeed two always-running processes located under /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/ChromeRemoteDesktopHost.app, which are apparently launched thanks to /Library/LaunchAgents/org.chromium.chromoting.plist. But those weren't running before I set up Remote Desktop; I imagine they were installed as part of the package and didn't exist before. If I disable Remote Desktop again… well, it doesn't actually delete the LaunchAgents plist or ChromeRemoteDesktopHost.app. That's rude. But it does make the processes stop running. (To be totally clear, Chrome's updater does run in the background, though not all the time.)
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
The amount of effort I need to invest to get my development team to even look at our apps in a browser other than Chrome is exhausting and I have to put up with snark and eye rolling every step of the way. I feel like I'm back in the IE7 era.
- prox 6y ago
  This point is truly worthy of an article or domain name. People here ask why there is so much “hate” for Chrome, but forget something important, that it doesn’t fall out of the sky. More and more I find that sites / apps work badly on my FF or Safari. It’s truly shameful and that IS my why absolutely am disappointed with Chrome and devs who can’t be arsed to do the work for other browsers.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    If you’ve never been in the IE era maybe it’s hard to believe/understand that browsers are different enough to make that necessary.
    - CRConrad 6y ago
      How does it make it necessary for developers not to be arsed to do the work for other browsers?
mraza007 6y ago
Thank goodness i switched to FireFox long time ago But i still have to use chrome as it makes some Google applications slow on firefox which I hate
smarx007 6y ago
Refutation by counterexample: I have Chrome, FF, and mpv running right now and my WindowServer process is averaging below 6% on a 2015 13" MBP.
leephillips 6y ago
I don’t know about the author’s claims, but I find Google Chrome unusable on my Ubuntu laptop. Whenever it’s running, my fan is blasting. If I clear the Chrome cache, this fixes it for a while, but it’s not long before it starts exercising the CPU again.
crazygringo 6y ago
This should not be the #1 story on HN right now. :( It's a single anecdote that deleting Chrome on two computers sped them up. It provides zero evidence (even anecdotal) that it has anything to do with "Keystone" specifically. It provides zero evidence for the idea that "Keystone" is able to "nefariously hide itself from Activity Monitor". And it also completely contradicts the normal user experience of Chrome, which is that most people's computers don't slow down after a Chrome install. (WindowServer on my MBP usually uses <10% CPU and I've used Chrome for many, many years.) Why is this nonsense being upvoted? I get people dislike Google and Chrome, but wouldn't it be better to stick to things backed by real evidence?
- bsmith0 6y ago
  Agreed, about 25% of the content on HN seems to be Google hate.
  - fartcannon 6y ago
    Google, Amazon and Facebook. Microsoft gets it in the comment section, mostly. Only Apple is truly safe on HN.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >Only Apple is truly safe on HN. Not even close to being true...
      - wutbrodo 6y ago
        Yea, I would've agreed ten years ago but Apple gets plenty of criticism here these days.
  - justinhj 6y ago
    None of the top 30 stories right now mention Google
- edoceo 6y ago
  It's literally Chome Bad = upvote
an_opabinia 6y ago
Is there a way to simply disable any Google background agents, but make them think they're still running? I really want to just disable the background agents.
sedeki 6y ago
This happened to me as well. Unplugging my external USB mouse solved the problem for me (lagging Window Server).
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
While I'm not sure if the author is right or wrong about this, Google definitely has a liberal approach to using the computers of their users. You are not asked (or even informed!) they will run the Software Reporter Tool and you won't probably notice it until the fan gets louder and you start investigating what is draining your battery now. Yes, I know they do it in good faith but still find in arrogant.
powerapple 6y ago
I recently started to use Edge. It is funny that YouTube couldn't detect my identity, so it will ask me to login in almost every video I play, and it won't display any comments for videos. If I want to read comments, I will have to switch to Chrome. YouTube behaves very strangely when you are not using Chrome. I do see many times WindowServer would be at 40%-50% CPU usage, it happens fairly often. I might just delete Chrome now.
- tmccrary55 6y ago
  Strange, I switched to Brave in the beginning of the year and it's pretty much chrome with stronger controls around cookies, trackers, etc. Youtube works just like it did under Chrome.
  - powerapple 6y ago
    That's nice. The YouTube problem on Edge appeared after a few weeks usage. Maybe I accidentally use of Google service triggered it. Now it assumes that I have an account, insist me logging in with my account to get better experience. It is very annoying. I cannot delete Chrome because I use it for gmail. I don't want to log into gmail with other browsers. Maybe I should keep using Chrome for YouTube as well.
varenc 6y ago
On mac OS, Activity Monitor itself causes WindowServer CPU usage to spike. This is the "observer effect". To test, just open a terminal and compare a few samples of `ps aux | grep WindowServer` with Activity Monitor open and with it closed. Mine averages 7-11% with Activity Monitor closed and 20-40% with Activity Monitor open. It's even more noticeable if your refresh rate is set to "Very Often". Closing Activity Monitor brings the WindowServer CPU back to normal. As other have noted, this site provides no evidence. The keystone daemon is not running in the background constantly. When it does run, it's plainly visible and not "hiding itself". According to the launchd job config located at `/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist` my keystone process is set to run itself every 3623 seconds. Probably randomized to avoid the thundering herd problem. When it does run it checks for updates, often downloading new ones, and then quits.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  This is because since macOS Catalina Activity Monitor did something to itself to make itself spend half a core just updating its table view and literally nobody who works on it (which I suspect is <1 person) understands that a monitoring tool that uses more CPU than the thing it is meant to monitor is absurd. I have seriously considered rewriting it multiple times and if the app stays like it is one day I probably will.
  - tomaskafka 6y ago
    Please do! I like Mac, but I yearn a quality of 1st and 3rd party Windows tools. Task manager is nicely readable and lightweight, and process explorer is a godsend. Meanwhile Activity Monitor updates once per 30 seconds when the system is under load.
    - varenc 6y ago
      Agreed! I recently used Windows for the first time in years, and was impressed by two of the built in monitoring programs. It was dead simple to actually get a global view of all file system activity and the processes responsible. Mac’s first party "fs_usage" tool is far less usable. As an example, there’s no way to prevent it from truncating long paths.
brown9-2 6y ago
The idea that a process could hide itself from Activity Monitor seems hard to believe, so since that is one of the first claims in the article it seems like it’d be easy to demonstrate or disprove.
rubatuga 6y ago
You know, it actually does seem a bit faster.
JoelMcCracken 6y ago
I never use Chrome really and decided to try it. I figured it wouldnt actually make a difference, so I didn't try to take any tests etc to see before and after. But, subjectively, my computer post-restart is MUCH more responsive and e.g. firefox is MUCH faster. WHereas it would take like 30-45 seconds for fx to load all of my pinned tabs, just now it loaded in like 5. I don't know what is going on, but I definitely notice a difference. I honestly expected this not to work, and was really surprised when it did.
danieldbird 6y ago
Only show the upvote / down vote button after clicking the link. This small bit of resistance would go a long way to solving the issue of upvoting titles, rather than the content.
saagarjha 6y ago
Google’s Keystone acts basically like malware; it sits in the background and has the ability to basically have its way with your computer. That being said it is hidden but I have never seen it try to hide itself; as a non-Chrome user who has it installed on my machine I see it run from time to time. Other than that it just waits in the background largely silently. Clearly, Google engineers should never have shipped the violation of consent that is Keystone, but the claims here are almost certainly bogus.
themusicgod1 6y ago
OK so to summarize this thread if I'm reading it correctly, TFA makes claims that are easily proven to be related to an old technical snafu in the auto-updater Now consider > The [other thing] has a universal back door through which that $G_GAFAM_COMPANY2 can forcibly change the software. This is called "auto-update". It puts the user helplessly at $G_GAFAM_COMPANY2 mercy. - richard stallman http://stallman.org/amazon.html http://stallman.org/amazon.html This right here is the root of the problem we are all at NSA/Alphabet Google+Microsoft's mercy, and auto-updater although arguably useful for normie-facing software like the world's standard web browser has downsides.
gnicholas 6y ago
If Google is doing this, that's not great. I am much more disturbed by the behavior of Microsoft Teams, which installs itself into your login items on install. Then you remove it from your login items and think you're all good. But if you ever open the application, it automatically adds itself to your login items again. As far as I can tell, it will re-add itself no matter how many times you have removed it. This strikes me as incredibly user hostile and I'm surprised Microsoft is quite so brazen about it. I would expect this behavior would lead people to just uninstall the desktop application and use Teams through a browser when needed.
justinhj 6y ago
This seems related but is 5 years old, https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-manage-the-secret-software-that-google-chrome-installs-on-your-mac https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-manage-the-secre...
jovial_galileo 6y ago
Fuck this site! Firefox devs are working their butts off to make a bbetter web for all of us and this site says not to use it? As a Firefox contributor in my spare time I really feel offended. You would prefer a monopoly with tons more money and a lot less features? You would also prefer a shady centralized shitcoin funded by vulture capitalists? Please recommend Firefox. It's the only honest browser out there. The servo team has been fired because we told our friends and family to use bloated spyware.
brucedawson 6y ago
If you find a bug in Chrome then I'm sure the team would like to know about it. We even have a website for reporting bugs in Chrome - crbug.com. Filing a bug there isn't as flashy as creating a website but it is probably more effective.
isodev 6y ago
I share the author's experience. Once you add Chrome, everything gets slow ... including Safari, which is weird and shouldn't happen.
deleted 6y ago
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vim-guru 6y ago
I'm starting to think that there's some truth to OP's accusations. The fan on my MacBook has had a tendency to spin like crazy and it's been quite unresponsive at times for it's spec and age. When this post came out, I went for it and deleted it all and it's been acting surprisingly more responsive. Doing a conference-call used to kick of the fan after about a minute or so, the fan doesn't make a sound at all now. I've put in an order for an M1, but I think dropping Chrome (Canary in my case) could have been a worthwhile solution. To add to my suspicion. A month or so ago, I was running Big Sur beta and was asked to give a system service from Google, admin access and restart. That in turn broke my Mac, so I had to spend hours to get back up and running. Why does the service require admin-access? Why did it require me to restart my computer?
glukki 6y ago
Could that happen due to some Chrome extension, mining in the background? XD > When any installed hosted app, packaged app, or extension has "background" permission, Chrome runs (invisibly) as soon as the user logs into their computer—before the user launches Chrome. The "background" permission also makes Chrome continue running (even after its last window is closed) until the user explicitly quits Chrome. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv2/declare_permissions/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv2/declare_per...
baumatron 6y ago
There is a bug report filed here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1158402 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=115840...

651 points by basisword 6y ago

Found an old thread involving the Google Keystone tech lead: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21065504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21065504

vlovich123 6y ago
This is why dates on articles is so important. I can’t tell if this website is newer or older than that response so I can’t tell if this is a problem today or was a problem that was resolved
- terracatta 6y ago
  The only clue this domain might be newer is he mentions the 16inch MacBook Pro which first came out in 2019.
- jonsully 6y ago
  Appears website is newer - https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/1337832978253230081 https://twitter.com/lorenb/status/1337832978253230081
  - mortenjorck 6y ago
    Huh. Chromeisbad.com doesn't have an author credit, but the tweet implies it's by notable iOS developer Loren Brichter, creator of Tweetie, Letterpress, and inventor of pull-to-refresh.
    - lorenb 6y ago
      Yeah, it felt weird to put my name on it, people usually do that when they have something to sell. Someone mentioned that it seems sketchy being anonymous so I'll probably sign it. There's no upside for me either way.
      - tripzilch 6y ago
        Hopefully the upside has been learning to do a bit more investigation, provide a bit more evidence, before registering a domain for your theory and submitting to HN :)
        lorenb 6y ago
        I didn't submit it or write it for this crowd.
eduardb 6y ago
That is about a different bug involving Keystone :)

indymike 6y ago

Should be called "Keystone, part of Chrome, appears to behave badly on my Mac." There's nothing like this running on my Linux box.

Exuma 6y ago

It sucks because Chrome is so much better usability wise than all those others. I wish they would just fix whatever this keystone trash is, and leave that to stonehenge

tomaskafka 6y ago
I found out, surprised, that current Edge is basically a better Chrome - even compatible with all extensions, faster, and with lower battery consumption. And, yes, Microsoft AutoUpdate, which however seems reasonable so far.
- ivank 6y ago
  Edge is missing E2E encryption in the sync feature.
  - alyandon 6y ago
    Yep - pretty critical missing bit of functionality unfortunately.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
What does Chrome do better than Safari?
- The_Colonel 6y ago
  Runs on my computer. (not a big fan of chrome though)
  - LeoPanthera 6y ago
    Well that's a great answer. ;) It's kind of a shame that Apple killed off the Windows version of Safari. I often wonder if they would consider bringing it back.
- terramex 6y ago
  For me - it works properly on spotty connections. I have fast, but unreliable internet that drops connection few times an hour and Safari and Firefox are almost unusable - when connection drops for just a few seconds they cannot open many websites for up to 5 minutes (reddit, google and youtube among many others; hacker news is one of the few that work all the time). Chromium based browsers do not have that issue, I used to use Vivaldi but temporarily switched to Safari as I wait for ARM build of Vivaldi and I am constantly frustrated by that issue. I have tried debugging it but got nowhere, it seems to be system wide issue as some 3rd party apps exhibit this behaviour too (for example live streaming through IINA or Skype) while others not (Electron based apps usually work fine). Recently switched to new M1 Macbook and it happens on it too.

A7med 6y ago

no thanks

imperialdrive 6y ago

The PC equivalent is the 'reporter' process? App locker really comes in handy for such a thing. I used Chrome for so long but it was Firefox containers that finally forced me to switch and never look back.

arendtio 6y ago
You probably mean 'Windows equivalent'. Many people don't care, but it really is a bad habit to use 'Windows' and 'PC' ambivalently. Yes, Windows is the dominant OS for the PC, but there are others as well.

crispyporkbites 6y ago

Just use Firefox If you want to be sure your stuff works across browsers, test in safari Don’t support or trust ad companies to deliver technology, their interests are always misaligned with the user

meibo 6y ago
Safari is arguably the worst browser to do general tests in if you're not making iOS apps, as it has a history of rendering and behaving differently than any other browser. The dev tools are also unusable compared to Chrome.
- littlestymaar 6y ago
  I think you misunderstood the GP's comment. They aren't advocating to work with Safari, but to work with Firefox then to test with Safari. If it works in Safari after being developed in Firefox, it's likely to work everywhere.
  - marczellm 6y ago
    FWIW I haven't found that to be the case with something as simple as making an image autoresize.
    - sbarre 6y ago
      Then you can keep a Chromium-based browser like Brave around for some additional testing, even if it's not your daily driver.
- fiatjaf 6y ago
  By "any other" you mean Chrome and Firefox?
iso1631 6y ago
A generation ago people used to say "as long as it works in IE6 then that's all you need, who cares about other browsers" Now it's Chrome, but it's the same danger.

ttul 6y ago

Any actual evidence of the performance impact? This seems thinly supported by evidence.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
I think evidence of functional impact might be just as appropriate. If removing keystone doesn’t harm the user, and may make the computer faster; why would anyone leave it at all?

johnghanks 6y ago

Chrome is fine this is dramatic.

sweetlucipher 6y ago

I'm gonna try this. Thank you.

rafaelturk 6y ago
Me too..
joshspankit 6y ago
Anyone who does: Please consider doing a video of the process and results, or some other proof. It would be awesome to get traction on this, but there needs to be undeniable evidence first.

sneak 6y ago

Chrome's security is, however, light years ahead of anyone else's; it remains the sole reason I still use it. It's possible to use Little Snitch to deny Keystone/ksupdate all network access, which is what I do, which removes the Google RCE vulnerability it places on your machine. Make sure to periodically manually update Chrome, however.

aflag 6y ago
What evidence do you have to back up that claim?
- HelloThur 6y ago
  In the security industry it's commonly known Chrome has the best security, this partly due to the amount of money Google invests in finding vulnerabilities (via fuzzing) in Chrome. For "proof", you can check how much exploit vendors pay for exploits for each browser. For example Zerodium offer: * $500k for Chrome RCE * $100k for Safari RCE * $100k for Firefox RCE https://zerodium.com/program.html https://zerodium.com/program.html The higher amount would generally indicate its harder to get an RCE in Chrome.
  - jsmith99 6y ago
    Or perhaps that Chrome exploits are more useful? In fact, given Firefox's tiny market share (despite my efforts) I'm surprised the disparity isn't higher. Maybe it's harder to find Firefox exploits? It's more likely that more popular browsers equally have more people attempting to crack them; and software in general is so buggy that results probably scale in proportion to the number of people looking.
    - HelloThur 6y ago
      Thats a valid point if we're referring to relatively unknown browsers. But the main three browsers are all high profile enough that they all have significant eyes on them and are thoroughly tested. Firefox may have a small market share, but exploits for Firefox may even have more value to some entities/governments, due to its use in Tor Browser. To clear any confusion, all three are extremely secure in comparison to other types of products (which is why exploits are so expensive), however Chrome just edges ahead, due to its sandboxing, and rapid patch cycle.

awinter-py 6y ago

the linked 2009 wired article quotes adobe saying 'yeah we don't see the need to have an always-on updater process' fast forward to 2020 when (1) adobe has this and (2) they still email me every so often to remind me to install their software which (3) I have installed and been using I think life would be better if there were a 3rd-party update service that wasn't trying to also own marketing + distribution (i.e. take 15-30% of the sale and also maintain platform dominance). A tool that was 'just updates' so my other software doesn't get to install a rootkit.

DaSilentStorm 6y ago
Like homebrew maybe? ;-)
- awinter-py 6y ago
  homebrew is non-commercial and updates on-run, rather than in the background, but frankly yes if they had a commercial offering I think they have the brand trust to make this work
  - inimino 6y ago
    They have that trust because all the software installed by homebrew is open source.
    - leipert 6y ago
      Not necessarily all open source, homebrew-cask has been merged into brew and you have e.g. Jetbrains IDEs and Zoom available. Personally I use homebrew-cask to manage almost all applications and their updates, turning auto-updating off in almost all apps. That way I am in control and can update when it is convenient, know if an update broke something, etc. Edit, using: - https://github.com/buo/homebrew-cask-upgrade https://github.com/buo/homebrew-cask-upgrade - https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-bundle
akkartik 6y ago

comex 6y ago

This is total nonsense. Even for malware, hiding from Activity Monitor would be quite a feat. Short of an exploit, you couldn't hide your process without a kernel rootkit, but macOS has required user approval to load kernel extensions for several versions now. I suppose you could go the low-tech way and just name your process "WindowServer" to confuse the user, but you'd still end up with two WindowServers. The idea that Chrome's auto-updater is doing this is ludicrous.

bfgoodrich 6y ago
Chrome does have the capacity for screen sharing (e.g. Chrome Remote Desktop), but I assume it wouldn't inject any extensions into the window server unless it was actively invoked.
masswerk 6y ago
I remember quite well the Google update process being notorious for evading Little Snitch firewall rules. It popped up every intervall as if it were a new (unseen) process. There's definitely something going on with the app signature. (Haven't used Chrome for some time by now.)
- comex 6y ago
  I am curious why that happens. From some Googling it seems like the updater copies itself to a random directory each time it runs [1], and I guess Little Snitch classifies programs by their full path, so it sees it as a new program each time. Copying itself is odd and probably suboptimal behavior, but it is explainable without assuming malice: my guess is that it’s related to some kind of “before we update let’s update the updater” bootstrapping logic. I could be wrong, but IIRC the updater code is open source, so it should be easy to find out. [Edit: Oops, it's actually not open source. Their Windows updater (Omaha) is open source, but their Mac one (Keystone) is not. Of course, one can still open the binaries in a decompiler.] Regardless, moving a program around on disk, or even deleting the program while it’s running (which is possible on macOS), would not prevent it from showing up in Activity Monitor. [1] http://www.reecefowell.com/2012/11/16/ksfetch-annoyance-on-mac-os-x-10-8-ml-with-hands-off-or-little-snitch-firewall/ http://www.reecefowell.com/2012/11/16/ksfetch-annoyance-on-m...

kgwxd 6y ago

Is there anything like this going on on Linux? I don't really use it, but I have it in case I need to do dev testing.

SXX 6y ago
Fortunatelly on Linux it's just using standard repositories.
- rhencke 6y ago
  Yes... except the Chrome package adds updating itself to your cron scripts without telling you. :/
  - fctorial 6y ago
    And it can update itself without sudo?
    - rhencke 6y ago
      Yes, since the cron script automatically runs as root on a repeating schedule. If you want to see what it does: mkdir junk cd junk wget https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb ar x google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb tar xf data.tar.xz cat opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome It's not nefarious - it's well-documented and explained. It's just making a decision for me that, as an administrator, I need to be the one deciding instead.
      - greatgib 6y ago
        That is very bad. With this they can easily and covertly target an ip and deploy automatically a rooted version to infiltrate a specific computer. That looks like crazy theory, but tell me what they will do if the nsa request it?
      - alacombe 6y ago
        % ls /opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome ls: cannot access '/opt/google/chrome/cron/google-chrome': No such file or directory

meibo 6y ago

The author should probably note that not updating Chrome is a very bad idea. There's a good reason for automated updates on a web browser for the general public and there's a good reason why Chrome is the most secure browser on the market.

fiatjaf 6y ago
And that reason is...
vfclists 6y ago
Using Chrome itself is very bad idea. There is fundamental reason why internet standards should not be dictated by a data-collection/advertising company. Try getting that across to the nerds who constantly whinge about Google. The Internet was designed to share information, not to provide a medium for delivering proprietary applications. Perhaps it should go back to its original goal, or people should be educated on other alternatives.
matsemann 6y ago
It could autoupdate when running/on launch though. No idea why Google litters my system with weird backgroundtasks, unless it's to get a few more datapoints on me..

paulnechifor 6y ago

Looks like this is just a Windows/OS 10 trojan. These sort of bullshit software issues usually come the the territory.

deleted 6y ago
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fortran77 6y ago
This is a Mac only problem. He was talking about Macs, not Windows.

ignoranceprior 6y ago

Does this apply to Ungoogled Chromium too?

vesche 6y ago

The author went so far as to create a domain for this rant, and yet didn't even do any performance metrics or basic forensic analysis at all. I'm not saying the author is wrong, but there's a lot of questions here. How does Keystone hide itself from the Activity Monitor? Is there a Keystone process if you run `ps aux`? Did you run dtruss/strace? What is it doing when Chrome isn't running that causes it to degrade performance?

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
I'm quite impressed by that “chromeisbad” as a domain was not already taken.
- codetrotter 6y ago
  Yeah. After reading your comment I tried out a couple of similar domains on the form x is bad and x is good and they were both parked waiting for someone to pay whatever ridiculous price the owner is wanting to demand to sell it. I wish it was illegal to do that.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    If it weren't legal, then someone would simply use it for a trivial website and then sell it. Perhaps that is the only reason this simple, trivial article exists.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    Somewhat related: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comput... * https://www.thedrive.com/news/35179/the-man-who-fought-nissan-over-a-website-and-won-has-died-of-covid-19 https://www.thedrive.com/news/35179/the-man-who-fought-nissa...
- libria 6y ago
  With the amount of rebuttals in this thread, I'm impressed `chromeisgood.com` isn't taken.

jansan 6y ago

Not sure about this Keystone, but the Chrome Software Reporter Tool keeps annoying me A LOT. It frequently causes high CPU load and at least the last time I checked I could not find a proper documentation on what it is or does.

morphicpro 6y ago

Keystone is the hidden nefarious program that apple installs as its been clearly stated to convert intel into arm code lol

rhencke 6y ago
You are thinking of Rosetta.

qz2 6y ago

To make an argument of this scale you have the burden of proof. There is no proof here past casual correlation. An analogy I see here is the scene from an old film where a woman walks behind a wooden screen and a goose walks out thus the woman is a shape shifting witch.

enraged_camel 6y ago
>>To make an argument of this scale you have the burden of proof. There is no proof here past casual correlation. And yet, as of this writing, it has 200+ upvotes and is at the top of the front page. HN audience really needs to do better. If you are reading this and are one of the people who upvoted the story, please really ask yourself why.
- qz2 6y ago
  Oh this is normal. People upvote the title, then comment, then read it if the comments aren’t agreeing with their preconception. Humans are a mess of a species.
  - epakai 6y ago
    Sounds like a design issue. Why does the front page have an upvote button if we expect people to read the post/article first?
    - qz2 6y ago
      Interesting point. Perhaps if you click through the upvote button shouldn’t appear until 5 minutes later?
    - Ma8ee 6y ago
      Because some people check the linked article only and might never look at the comments.
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    There isn't a website on the planet that allows for votes where it doesn't very often happen that they provide a viewport into the boundless stupidity of the human species. I wonder how H.N. and similar websites would work if ranking was purely a function of activity and not of votes — simply push to the top whichever branch of the tree has the last reply so highly debated news is statistically more often at the top, but whichever link had the last reply somewhere will be currently at the top.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

Hm. I figure I'll give it a try. I have stability/slowdown issues, but I don't attribute it to anything more than I'm a native software/device control developer, and often running dodgy, hacked-together tools. I generally have to do a "deep cleaning" of my system once a year or so. I do often have a windowserver hang. I don't really use Chrome much (just for testing, or the odd times that a site won't work on Safari). Not a big deal for me to rip it out. If it were a tool that I use all the time, though, I might be more comfortable with a posting that had a bit more detail.

Thaxll 6y ago

"Safari is good" haha ...

g0atbutt 6y ago

I've had noticeable issues with "WindowServer" in the past (taking 80% CPU usage and causing the fans to ramp up even when the system seemed like it should be idling even after a reboot) so I decided to give this a shot. This is anecdotal but there is a noticeable difference for me with responsiveness after following these steps. Currently the WindowServer process is hovering around 14%.

Siyo 6y ago
Most likely the issue was resolved by the reboot, not by uninstalling Chrome. From my experience Mac OS tends to slow down after a few days. Animations and scrolling gets choppy and there's nothing I can do to fix it, short of rebooting.
- g0atbutt 6y ago
  I can assure you that it wasn't related just to rebooting as this has been something that's been bugging me for months. I had previously rebooted earlier in the day because of this exact same issue (a runaway WindowServer process), before I saw this article. I also did a fresh reboot before following these instructions too as a sort of "control". The change only happened for me after removing Chrome as well as the launch agent for keystone.
- masswerk 6y ago
  > From my experience Mac OS tends to slow down after a few days Just for the sake of the argument, do you have installed Chrome?
- worik 6y ago
  Yes. Just like Linux - in 1996. Very sad. (I have recently started using Apple tools for developping with Swift/Xcode on iPad. I am very unimpressed by the quality of the tools, and quite impressed by the range and depth of features....)
- thewebcount 6y ago
  I use macOS daily for months at a time without rebooting and have not seen this problem on any of the 5 Macs I've been using for the past several years, for what that's worth. It does seem like it's something specific to your machine.

systemvoltage 6y ago

The window to the internet should not be some monster that takes millions of developer hours and held ransom by a couple of big companies. I should be able to build my own browser in a 3 month sabbatical.

worik 6y ago
The Internet is much bigger than the Interweb.
sbarre 6y ago
> The window to the internet This exact part of your comment is why big companies are fighting so hard to own and gatekeep web browsers.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  > big companies are fighting so hard to own and gatekeep web browsers could you expand on this? Which big companies are you referring to?
  - collinvandyck76 6y ago
    Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      Well, Microsoft gave up and are using Google's browser. And Mozilla just downsized the Firefox team (and they're paid by Google to keep Firefox going, basically). And Safari is only ever a presence on Apple computers, which Apple already control completely. It's not really a huge competition...
      - sbarre 6y ago
        Microsoft Edge is not "Google's browser". It uses the Chromium rendering engine but it's still developed and distributed by Microsoft, which means they own the telemetry, the features, the defaults, and the user experience (which are the parts that matter, no one cares about the renderer from a business POV). Google has Chrome, we've covered that already. Apple has Safari. Firefox exists, and is only funded by Google - in my opinion - to fend off anti-trust at this point. Just because Google has more or less won the browser wars doesn't mean all those other companies wouldn't _love_ to regain market share in the future. And perhaps they will. Owning that window is hugely valuable and lucrative, so why wouldn't they?

ma2rten 6y ago

This must be how things like some alternative medicine and anti-vax start: Things like feeling healthy and your computer being slow can be very subjective. The author appears to be technical enough to know that there is something called keystone on his computer, but not technical enough to benchmark and investigate further. The name keystone sounds kind of nefarious, so it makes sense that someone would be able to convince themselves that it makes their computer slower.

deleted 6y ago
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stjohnswarts 6y ago
Well yeah, because "my kid has autism and his also got a vaccine so obviously that's the reason my kid got autism" is exactly how it gets started because they heard about that paper (or rumors thereof) that has been debunked a 1000 times over in the medical literature but now it's a part of folklore and almost impossible to kill like other superstitions.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

A lot of skeptical comments in this thread. I'm not low-level enough to confirm or deny the specific claims in the article. I will say that my experience with regards to CPU performance "leaks" and Chrome seeming to always be running in the background even when I didn't want it to, as well as Chrome starting up on system startup when there didn't seem to be any references to it anywhere I'd expect to cause that, are consistent with the article. I saw a lot of "low-level integration" with my system going on, a lot more than I understood, ever wanted or asked for, and there was no way I knew of to turn it off. It was like IE on Windows all over again. I was also able to solve the issues by removing Chrome from my systems. I sometimes install it temporarily to do Web testing and remove it shortly afterwards, but I think I'll do that in a VM from now on.

comex 6y ago
What is running in the background/on startup, Chrome itself or its updater? And is this on macOS or another platform?
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  This was on Mac OS X when it was still stylized that way. Chrome itself would run on system startup. I no longer use that system, and don't remember the details well enough.
- boatsie 6y ago
  Chrome can/does definitely run in the background if you have chrome Remote Desktop enabled. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had a daemon always running in case you want to enable Remote Desktop.
  - comex 6y ago
    I just tested it. Setting up Chrome Remote Desktop requires installing a separate package which Chrome downloads for you. When it's enabled, there are indeed two always-running processes located under /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/ChromeRemoteDesktopHost.app, which are apparently launched thanks to /Library/LaunchAgents/org.chromium.chromoting.plist. But those weren't running before I set up Remote Desktop; I imagine they were installed as part of the package and didn't exist before. If I disable Remote Desktop again… well, it doesn't actually delete the LaunchAgents plist or ChromeRemoteDesktopHost.app. That's rude. But it does make the processes stop running. (To be totally clear, Chrome's updater does run in the background, though not all the time.)

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

The amount of effort I need to invest to get my development team to even look at our apps in a browser other than Chrome is exhausting and I have to put up with snark and eye rolling every step of the way. I feel like I'm back in the IE7 era.

prox 6y ago
This point is truly worthy of an article or domain name. People here ask why there is so much “hate” for Chrome, but forget something important, that it doesn’t fall out of the sky. More and more I find that sites / apps work badly on my FF or Safari. It’s truly shameful and that IS my why absolutely am disappointed with Chrome and devs who can’t be arsed to do the work for other browsers.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  If you’ve never been in the IE era maybe it’s hard to believe/understand that browsers are different enough to make that necessary.
  - CRConrad 6y ago
    How does it make it necessary for developers not to be arsed to do the work for other browsers?

mraza007 6y ago

Thank goodness i switched to FireFox long time ago But i still have to use chrome as it makes some Google applications slow on firefox which I hate

smarx007 6y ago

Refutation by counterexample: I have Chrome, FF, and mpv running right now and my WindowServer process is averaging below 6% on a 2015 13" MBP.

leephillips 6y ago

I don’t know about the author’s claims, but I find Google Chrome unusable on my Ubuntu laptop. Whenever it’s running, my fan is blasting. If I clear the Chrome cache, this fixes it for a while, but it’s not long before it starts exercising the CPU again.

crazygringo 6y ago

This should not be the #1 story on HN right now. :( It's a single anecdote that deleting Chrome on two computers sped them up. It provides zero evidence (even anecdotal) that it has anything to do with "Keystone" specifically. It provides zero evidence for the idea that "Keystone" is able to "nefariously hide itself from Activity Monitor". And it also completely contradicts the normal user experience of Chrome, which is that most people's computers don't slow down after a Chrome install. (WindowServer on my MBP usually uses <10% CPU and I've used Chrome for many, many years.) Why is this nonsense being upvoted? I get people dislike Google and Chrome, but wouldn't it be better to stick to things backed by real evidence?

bsmith0 6y ago
Agreed, about 25% of the content on HN seems to be Google hate.
- fartcannon 6y ago
  Google, Amazon and Facebook. Microsoft gets it in the comment section, mostly. Only Apple is truly safe on HN.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >Only Apple is truly safe on HN. Not even close to being true...
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      Yea, I would've agreed ten years ago but Apple gets plenty of criticism here these days.
- justinhj 6y ago
  None of the top 30 stories right now mention Google
edoceo 6y ago
It's literally Chome Bad = upvote

an_opabinia 6y ago

Is there a way to simply disable any Google background agents, but make them think they're still running? I really want to just disable the background agents.

sedeki 6y ago

This happened to me as well. Unplugging my external USB mouse solved the problem for me (lagging Window Server).

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

While I'm not sure if the author is right or wrong about this, Google definitely has a liberal approach to using the computers of their users. You are not asked (or even informed!) they will run the Software Reporter Tool and you won't probably notice it until the fan gets louder and you start investigating what is draining your battery now. Yes, I know they do it in good faith but still find in arrogant.

powerapple 6y ago

I recently started to use Edge. It is funny that YouTube couldn't detect my identity, so it will ask me to login in almost every video I play, and it won't display any comments for videos. If I want to read comments, I will have to switch to Chrome. YouTube behaves very strangely when you are not using Chrome. I do see many times WindowServer would be at 40%-50% CPU usage, it happens fairly often. I might just delete Chrome now.

tmccrary55 6y ago
Strange, I switched to Brave in the beginning of the year and it's pretty much chrome with stronger controls around cookies, trackers, etc. Youtube works just like it did under Chrome.
- powerapple 6y ago
  That's nice. The YouTube problem on Edge appeared after a few weeks usage. Maybe I accidentally use of Google service triggered it. Now it assumes that I have an account, insist me logging in with my account to get better experience. It is very annoying. I cannot delete Chrome because I use it for gmail. I don't want to log into gmail with other browsers. Maybe I should keep using Chrome for YouTube as well.

varenc 6y ago

On mac OS, Activity Monitor itself causes WindowServer CPU usage to spike. This is the "observer effect". To test, just open a terminal and compare a few samples of `ps aux | grep WindowServer` with Activity Monitor open and with it closed. Mine averages 7-11% with Activity Monitor closed and 20-40% with Activity Monitor open. It's even more noticeable if your refresh rate is set to "Very Often". Closing Activity Monitor brings the WindowServer CPU back to normal. As other have noted, this site provides no evidence. The keystone daemon is not running in the background constantly. When it does run, it's plainly visible and not "hiding itself". According to the launchd job config located at `/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist` my keystone process is set to run itself every 3623 seconds. Probably randomized to avoid the thundering herd problem. When it does run it checks for updates, often downloading new ones, and then quits.

saagarjha 6y ago
This is because since macOS Catalina Activity Monitor did something to itself to make itself spend half a core just updating its table view and literally nobody who works on it (which I suspect is <1 person) understands that a monitoring tool that uses more CPU than the thing it is meant to monitor is absurd. I have seriously considered rewriting it multiple times and if the app stays like it is one day I probably will.
- tomaskafka 6y ago
  Please do! I like Mac, but I yearn a quality of 1st and 3rd party Windows tools. Task manager is nicely readable and lightweight, and process explorer is a godsend. Meanwhile Activity Monitor updates once per 30 seconds when the system is under load.
  - varenc 6y ago
    Agreed! I recently used Windows for the first time in years, and was impressed by two of the built in monitoring programs. It was dead simple to actually get a global view of all file system activity and the processes responsible. Mac’s first party "fs_usage" tool is far less usable. As an example, there’s no way to prevent it from truncating long paths.

brown9-2 6y ago

The idea that a process could hide itself from Activity Monitor seems hard to believe, so since that is one of the first claims in the article it seems like it’d be easy to demonstrate or disprove.

rubatuga 6y ago

You know, it actually does seem a bit faster.

JoelMcCracken 6y ago

I never use Chrome really and decided to try it. I figured it wouldnt actually make a difference, so I didn't try to take any tests etc to see before and after. But, subjectively, my computer post-restart is MUCH more responsive and e.g. firefox is MUCH faster. WHereas it would take like 30-45 seconds for fx to load all of my pinned tabs, just now it loaded in like 5. I don't know what is going on, but I definitely notice a difference. I honestly expected this not to work, and was really surprised when it did.

danieldbird 6y ago

Only show the upvote / down vote button after clicking the link. This small bit of resistance would go a long way to solving the issue of upvoting titles, rather than the content.

saagarjha 6y ago

Google’s Keystone acts basically like malware; it sits in the background and has the ability to basically have its way with your computer. That being said it is hidden but I have never seen it try to hide itself; as a non-Chrome user who has it installed on my machine I see it run from time to time. Other than that it just waits in the background largely silently. Clearly, Google engineers should never have shipped the violation of consent that is Keystone, but the claims here are almost certainly bogus.

themusicgod1 6y ago

OK so to summarize this thread if I'm reading it correctly, TFA makes claims that are easily proven to be related to an old technical snafu in the auto-updater Now consider > The [other thing] has a universal back door through which that $G_GAFAM_COMPANY2 can forcibly change the software. This is called "auto-update". It puts the user helplessly at $G_GAFAM_COMPANY2 mercy. - richard stallman http://stallman.org/amazon.html http://stallman.org/amazon.html This right here is the root of the problem we are all at NSA/Alphabet Google+Microsoft's mercy, and auto-updater although arguably useful for normie-facing software like the world's standard web browser has downsides.

gnicholas 6y ago

If Google is doing this, that's not great. I am much more disturbed by the behavior of Microsoft Teams, which installs itself into your login items on install. Then you remove it from your login items and think you're all good. But if you ever open the application, it automatically adds itself to your login items again. As far as I can tell, it will re-add itself no matter how many times you have removed it. This strikes me as incredibly user hostile and I'm surprised Microsoft is quite so brazen about it. I would expect this behavior would lead people to just uninstall the desktop application and use Teams through a browser when needed.

justinhj 6y ago

This seems related but is 5 years old, https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-manage-the-secret-software-that-google-chrome-installs-on-your-mac https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-manage-the-secre...

jovial_galileo 6y ago

Fuck this site! Firefox devs are working their butts off to make a bbetter web for all of us and this site says not to use it? As a Firefox contributor in my spare time I really feel offended. You would prefer a monopoly with tons more money and a lot less features? You would also prefer a shady centralized shitcoin funded by vulture capitalists? Please recommend Firefox. It's the only honest browser out there. The servo team has been fired because we told our friends and family to use bloated spyware.

brucedawson 6y ago

If you find a bug in Chrome then I'm sure the team would like to know about it. We even have a website for reporting bugs in Chrome - crbug.com. Filing a bug there isn't as flashy as creating a website but it is probably more effective.

isodev 6y ago

I share the author's experience. Once you add Chrome, everything gets slow ... including Safari, which is weird and shouldn't happen.

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vim-guru 6y ago

I'm starting to think that there's some truth to OP's accusations. The fan on my MacBook has had a tendency to spin like crazy and it's been quite unresponsive at times for it's spec and age. When this post came out, I went for it and deleted it all and it's been acting surprisingly more responsive. Doing a conference-call used to kick of the fan after about a minute or so, the fan doesn't make a sound at all now. I've put in an order for an M1, but I think dropping Chrome (Canary in my case) could have been a worthwhile solution. To add to my suspicion. A month or so ago, I was running Big Sur beta and was asked to give a system service from Google, admin access and restart. That in turn broke my Mac, so I had to spend hours to get back up and running. Why does the service require admin-access? Why did it require me to restart my computer?

glukki 6y ago

Could that happen due to some Chrome extension, mining in the background? XD > When any installed hosted app, packaged app, or extension has "background" permission, Chrome runs (invisibly) as soon as the user logs into their computer—before the user launches Chrome. The "background" permission also makes Chrome continue running (even after its last window is closed) until the user explicitly quits Chrome. https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv2/declare_permissions/ https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv2/declare_per...

baumatron 6y ago

There is a bug report filed here: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1158402 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=115840...