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Google earth was nice too, and street view. It was hard to believe at first. But Chrome was just a re-hash of firefox, nothing exciting there.

jwally 4y ago
Kind of agree. The last time I think I was this stoked to play with a mass market tech tool like this was street-view, and before that Google Earth.
rippercushions 4y ago
No, Chrome was a revelation when it came out. It was way faster than Firefox and it had many great features we now take for granted, like isolated tabs, popup blocking etc.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  Revisionist history. Firefox had a built-in pop up blocker in 2003, years before Chrome was even a seed in Sundar’s balls. I know because I used it. Chrome was and is a step back, foisted on people with dark patterns, back in the day having speed by sacrificing features like extensibility and customisability.
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    Now you're the one revising history. Separate processes per window and process isolation was a big deal in early Chrome. Yes, Google has taken away much of the user control that made Chrome good and replaced it with things that optimize for the comfort of their advertising model. But there's also a reason software people switched to Chrome for a long while. It was just better. It's not anymore. I switched back to Firefox when Chrome broke ad blocking.
    - flavius29663 4y ago
      Chrome might have been slightly better than Firefox, but not ground breaking like google earth, street view, gmail etc.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  I remember everyone being excited about it suggesting searches on the address bar and suggesting websites in it you had never previously visited. Every other browser only autocompleted addresses you had visited before.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  isolated tabs and popup blocking (which firefox already had) were not ground breaking in any way. They were implementation details. By that point, Firefox was stable enough to not make a big difference if it was isolated tabs or not.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    was stable enough and slow
    - flavius29663 4y ago
      building a slightly faster browser is not ground breaking... I feel like people were just excited about anything coming out of google, back then. But it was not a revolution in browsers or anything like that. Chrome only got the upper-hand in browser wars because they install it on all the android devices(and not being able to uninstall it) - which I am not sure how they got away with, they should have been kept in check by anti-monopoly measures.
jorl17 4y ago
A re-hash of Firefox? I am a Firefox user now, and I was a Firefox user when Chrome came out, but Chrome was miles ahead of Firefox in pretty much most things that mattered for most people, especially performance and usability. Chrome was a revolution for the web.

jwally 4y ago

Kind of agree. The last time I think I was this stoked to play with a mass market tech tool like this was street-view, and before that Google Earth.

rippercushions 4y ago

No, Chrome was a revelation when it came out. It was way faster than Firefox and it had many great features we now take for granted, like isolated tabs, popup blocking etc.

MagnumOpus 4y ago
Revisionist history. Firefox had a built-in pop up blocker in 2003, years before Chrome was even a seed in Sundar’s balls. I know because I used it. Chrome was and is a step back, foisted on people with dark patterns, back in the day having speed by sacrificing features like extensibility and customisability.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  Now you're the one revising history. Separate processes per window and process isolation was a big deal in early Chrome. Yes, Google has taken away much of the user control that made Chrome good and replaced it with things that optimize for the comfort of their advertising model. But there's also a reason software people switched to Chrome for a long while. It was just better. It's not anymore. I switched back to Firefox when Chrome broke ad blocking.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    Chrome might have been slightly better than Firefox, but not ground breaking like google earth, street view, gmail etc.
ajmurmann 4y ago
I remember everyone being excited about it suggesting searches on the address bar and suggesting websites in it you had never previously visited. Every other browser only autocompleted addresses you had visited before.
flavius29663 4y ago
isolated tabs and popup blocking (which firefox already had) were not ground breaking in any way. They were implementation details. By that point, Firefox was stable enough to not make a big difference if it was isolated tabs or not.
- fomine3 4y ago
  was stable enough and slow
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    building a slightly faster browser is not ground breaking... I feel like people were just excited about anything coming out of google, back then. But it was not a revolution in browsers or anything like that. Chrome only got the upper-hand in browser wars because they install it on all the android devices(and not being able to uninstall it) - which I am not sure how they got away with, they should have been kept in check by anti-monopoly measures.

jorl17 4y ago

A re-hash of Firefox? I am a Firefox user now, and I was a Firefox user when Chrome came out, but Chrome was miles ahead of Firefox in pretty much most things that mattered for most people, especially performance and usability. Chrome was a revolution for the web.