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Chrome 17 preloads autocompleted URLs as you type
- Drakim 15y agoThis always seemed like the next logical step for me, and I'm surprised it wasn't implemented in various browsers earlier on.
- rplnt 15y agoProbably because it has so many drawbacks. Disabling it by default is really bad decision if you ask me. Still a great feature though.
- gcp 15y agoGoing off and fetching stuff that the user hasn't explicitly requested yet is icky. For example, you connect your laptop onto your employers network, and want to look up several things about face detection. You start typing "face" and each time Chrome goes off and fetches your Facebook page. You get fired for repeatedly visiting Facebook at work. Thanks, Chrome!
- Drakim 15y agoI can see your argument, but I'm having a hard time grasping the "Thanks, Chome!" comment as if they were the ones who fired you. Obviously if your workplace fires you for this they are in error for using inaccurate data.
- gcp 15y agoWhat "inaccurate data"? You visited Facebook repeatedly, there's no arguing against that. You might not have wished to, but who's fault is that?
- jonknee 15y agoYou didn't visit Facebook repeatedly and if you get fired for that you have an excellent legal case. You're loading things from Facebook on a very high percentage of websites, so if you were really going to get fired for HTTP requests to Facebook, it would have already happened a long time ago.
- jaredsohn 15y ago>you have an excellent legal case. Not if you're "at-will".
- mc32 15y agoNot necessarily. If it's a portable device, they may be able to take it home (practically the default, if you're issued a laptop). Employer at that point (in the home) cannot prevent you from visiting any such site as you're doing it on your time. I suppose they could have a clause preventing you from visiting FB (or any other site) at any time from a work-provided device, but that's unlikely.
- GFischer 15y agoThere were various Firefox plugins that implemented something like that, and they've been heavily criticized for the additional cost to the websites. One I used was called Fasterfox. "Prefetching is considered an aggressive practice when it's initiated by the client, and plug-ins like Fasterfox have been widely criticized for supporting it" http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=DyVgAez6yg8C&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=fasterfox+criticism&source=bl&ots=n2arp5etMs&sig=XTHJ6_f-sXpYO_GX7s5k9THtRWw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=O7szT56nGeX40gGn2uzDAg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=fasterfox%20criticism&f=false http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=DyVgAez6yg8C&pg=PA29...
- finnw 15y agoThere is also a local proxy server (cannot remember the name but it has been around since the late 90s) that can do the same for any browser. Last time I looked at it, it was not intelligent and would preload every .html link on the page, plus any .css or .js they referred to.
- blakefarabi 15y agoThats going to be a problem for advertising networks I bet.
- bwarp 15y agoThere goes my 3G bandwidth without even asking... Not a good feature if you ask me.
- nextparadigms 15y agoI haven't checked Chrome 17 yet, but they've had this feature for a while in chrome://flags/ and you can probably still turn it off. On Chrome for Android they use this feature, too, but it's on default for "Wi-Fi only". I guess they could make a similar setting for laptops that use 3G connections, too.
- caw 15y agoI have 17-beta, but here's the flag: "Prerender from omnibox Enables prerendering of suggestions from the Omnibox and predicts appropriate network actions (prerendering, Instant, DNS preconnect) by calculating a confidence value for each Omnibox result." Your options are Automatic, Enabled, Disabled. Default was Automatic.
- m_for_monkey 15y agoAnd not only your and other Chrome users bandwidth. It generates unnecessary traffic and slows down the whole network.
- lloeki 15y agoNot only that but mobile networks often limit the number of open tcp/udp connections to an unbelievably low number. You could easily DoS yourself out of the network's tcp stack. Also, preloading and rendering something like ten pages in parallel when I really want only one implies wasted wattage. There goes your battery too.
- rvkennedy 15y agoSome serious bandwidth usage if you're on a mobile connection - Windows 8 will be able to detect this, I'm not sure if Linux or OSX can do it in a nice way. In the meantime you can disable it here: http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=1385029 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&...
- olalonde 15y agoI wonder if Google Analytics will count those preloads as page views / unique visits. Anyone has an idea? Edit: Since GA works mostly with Javascript, I assume it won't have any significant effect.
- mofle 15y agoI believe GA uses the visibility API to check if the site is visible.
- stingraycharles 15y agoI believe this is the "Chrome Instant" feature as discussed here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en-GB/webmasters-faq.html#instant http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en-GB/webmasters-faq.html#... You can use the "X-Purpose: instant" HTTP header to detect these requests. If you're really paranoid, you can return those requests with "403 Forbidden" responses, or your analytics company will have to take these headers into account.
- itmag 15y agoWhat if it preloads illegal content and you get busted for it?
- vasco 15y ago>The preloading will occur in cases when the top match generated by the omnibox's autocompletion functionality is a site that the user visits frequently.
- barrkel 15y agoI don't particularly want to inform Google of all files I download.
- gcp 15y agoThe feature only sends the URL if its not in a known whitelist. But yes, unless you download very popular stuff, sending all your URLs to Google is exactly what it does.
- jsavimbi 15y agoWhich is a feature I do not remember requesting from Google. Why opt out instead of opt in is anyone's guess.
- jonknee 15y agoMaybe because the people who need it most are the least likely to find it and opt-in?
- jsavimbi 15y agoTo make the assumption that people actually need a private business entity, Google, to censor the internet for them is ludicrous.
- mistercow 15y agoThere's no censorship here. They analyze the file and tell you if they think it's malicious. You are free to do with that information as you will.
- mistercow 15y agoThen go to the preferences and uncheck "Enable phishing and malware protection".
- 15y ago
- alexchamberlain 15y agoA lot of people have a problem with this as you are downloading something you haven't explicitly asked for. Would it be more appropriate if Chrome opened the TCP connection as you typed thus decreasing latency, but without actually downloading content?
- darkswoop 15y agoThat could be a nice income boost for google, right? Keyword: "impression based adsense advertisements"?
- jonknee 15y agoConsidering Google does a majority of CPC advertising and already makes a page visibility API... No. http://code.google.com/chrome/whitepapers/pagevisibility.html http://code.google.com/chrome/whitepapers/pagevisibility.htm...
- guynamedloren 15y agoHN users complaining about bandwidth usage? Seriously? It's 2012. I'm all for a better user experience, and this is exactly what Google is delivering. Quit crying.
- bwarp 15y agoBandwidth costs a fortune on mobile devices in most countries around the world. It's a legitimate whinge.
- jonknee 15y agoAnd Chrome 17 isn't available on mobile devices. A similar feature is on Chrome for Android, but is on by default only if the user is connected through WiFi.
- darklajid 15y agoLet me introduce you to a world of people with laptops (bigger screen, easier to type on, supports actual work) tethered to their phones.
- jonknee 15y agoLet me introduce you to "settings". You can disable the omnibox, prediction, instant, etc.
- darklajid 15y agoWhich would be fine, if the default is 'off'. It isn't, as far as I understand. It seems you like that feature. I respect that, just like I totally understand that for some users 'instant search' on Google is a good feature. For me this is a misfeature though and, given the potential network abuse, shouldn't be on by default. Ignore the mobile network: Every hotel I've been to in Europe and Israel had very crappy wifi quality. I'm pretty sure that I'll hate sitting in a lobby with or on the same floor as Chrome users with that setting turned on (granted: Depends on usage patterns and how frequent this feature would jump into life). On those connections I can easily throttle myself to death by opening three tabs. Please don't go for the low-hanging 'fix the network' here. I cannot. And that's a real world scenario that will become worse by a setting that defaults to true although it might very well create problems for the user _and others around him_.
- niyazpk 15y agoWhat will happen to my server logs?
- ChrisMorrisCo 15y agoDoes Google add protection against harmful websites? What if I typo a URL and it starts pre-loading a malware-filled website? Just curious. A cool feature, but I think this should be opt-in.
- joshuahedlund 15y agoFrom the second paragraph: "The preloading will occur in cases when the top match generated by the omnibox's autocompletion functionality is a site that the user visits frequently" Since you probably don't "frequently" visit malware-filled websites, this shouldn't be an issue - although I wonder if Chrome would load it anyway or not.. It seems to do a better job than most browsers of pre-emptively warning you when you try to visit a dangerous website, at least in my experience.
- ChrisMorrisCo 15y agoThanks! I must have missed that the first time I read, I read the same information via the Chrome support page.
- michaelkscott 15y agoIs there a way to opt-out of this feature? Or are there any hacks to do it manually?
- mmuro 15y agoJust another way for Google to capture information about you (options be damned - if it's on by default, it's going to stay that way for the majority). Plus, this seems like a cheap way to look like your browser is faster.