Free Republic

Google's Chrome web browser will soon include a warning that "private" browsing does not prevent users from being tracked, a move that comes months after Google settled a related privacy lawsuit. In December, Google settled a $5 billion privacy lawsuit, which alleged that it spied on people who used Chrome's private browsing — or 'Incognito' — mode. A pre-release version of the browser has been found to include an updated privacy warning that addresses a key piece of evidence in the settled lawsuit — that users "overestimate" the privacy protection features in Chrome. When the change is rolled out, users...

In an attempt to better track users and predict their search habits, Google Chrome has developed FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). FLoC provides visibility into user data to any website that desires this information. In fact, FLoC places each user in an ID group to help websites recognize and target individuals. In response, the alternative search engine DuckDuckGo has come out with an extension for Chrome that can block FLoC tracking. Furthermore, users now have the option of using either the DuckDuckGo application or extension to entirely opt out of FLoC monitoring. Google first implemented FLoC in order to offer...

As privacy concerns grow, companies like Google and Facebook that rely on data collection and advertising for revenue are increasingly in the spotlight. But is it really possible to give up Google's vast range of services? Here are my recommended alternatives. Over the past two years, I've been switching between a succession of iPhones and a series of Android devices, using each for an extended amount of time. Spending months with each mobile platform has been a tremendously useful exercise, helping me understand the strengths and weaknesses of the two dominant smartphone options.

Like it or not, Donald Trump's face is here to stay. From being named Time magazine's person of the year, to daily coverage of his transitional plans, you can't glance at a news source—let alone social media—without seeing Trump's face several times over. Or can you? With the help of a Google Chrome extension called "Make America Kittens Again" you can find sweet relief, in the form of kittens. The extension finds headlines with Trump's name in them and replaces the associated images with pictures of adorable little furballs snuggling, playing, and being generally kittenish.

This is when you know it’s time to switch. Are there crazy people out there that say they are conservative? Yes, but we don’t like them either. Why doesn’t the Left take a look at their own party for once and see how many radicals they have. More than they would like to admit, we would say. “George Zola” is the alias of a web professional who spoke with Huffington Post about his new a Google Chrome extension, “Stop Normalizing The Alt Right.” The app works by automatically taking out all mentions of “alt-right,” and replacing the term with “white...

Microsoft has turned on a new set of Windows Tips that warn Windows 10 users that Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox is draining their laptop’s battery. The solution, according to the notification, is to use Microsoft Edge. We reached out to Microsoft for clarification. “Microsoft Edge was designed exclusively for Windows 10 with features and functionality that enhance the browsing experience such as Cortana, easy sharing, reading, and researching,” a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat. “These Windows Tips notifications were created to provide people with quick, easy information that can help them enhance their Windows 10 experience, including information that can...

Google has banned an extension of its Chrome browser which was being used to identify Jewish names on the internet by surrounding them with three sets of brackets, or parentheses. It was called the "coincidence detector" - a reference to a conspiracy theory about Jewish people and global control. It had around 2,500 users and a database of 8,800 common Jewish names which it could pick out on websites reported tech site Mic.

Every morning, I fire up my home computer (downloaded Windows 10 last week) and when I go to my Google Chrome icon, it takes me exactly 10 minutes for the Google main page to pop up on my screen. I like Google Chrome because I have GooglePlus and GMail, but it seems that Windows 10 is not supporting it because they want users to jump to Microsoft Edge (their browser) instead. What can I do to correct this? Should I uninstall and then install Google Chrome again? This delay is very frustrating.

A new Chrome extension, called Google Tone, released this week makes it possible to share a URL with another computer in the room using a series of beeps and boops. The concept is dead simple yet instantly instills a sense of disbelief. A computer making seemingly random sounds can transmit the URL for the tab I have open in Chrome across the room? Get out. Full of skepticism, I decided to put it to the test. I installed the Chrome extension on a MacBook Air and a HP laptop running Windows 10. And you know what? It works! Click on...

Earlier, we posted about our new MacBook Airs, which, still in only their first days of use, have been freezing and crashing like crazy. This generated some great discussion threads, from both readers and writers alike. Apparently, we're not the only ones with this MacBook bug!

Google's Chrome has overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most widely used web browser in the world, according to statistics released today.Data from web analytics service StatCounter showed that for the week of May 14-20 Chrome has averaged a higher share of web traffic for a full seven-day stretch.The development will be welcome news for web designers, who have long struggled with the Microsoft browser's patchy implementation of new web coding standards. Enlarge   Overtaken: This graph shows the market share of the top five web browsers Statcounter's data showed Chrome in the lead in the field of five major...

t’s not every day that you start a business and quickly decide to say “no” to 70 percent of your potential customers. In retrospect, this turned out to be 4ormat’s secret weapon. At 4ormat, our goal is to provide an easy way for creative professionals to create and manage an online portfolio website. Although the portfolio itself looks great in all browsers, to this day, the portfolio building interface does not support Internet Explorer. And we don’t just mean IE6 or even IE7. We mean every version of Internet Explorer.

When posting a picture on FR,Windows is only a right click on the image which gives the URL which is put into the HTML code . Google Chrome as far as I can tell takes three or four steps to get the URL. Any shortcuts?

Miscreants have created a Trojan that poses as a Google Chrome extension. Spammed messages attempt to dupe prospective marks into trying an add-on that "helps you better organise your documents received in your email". Interested parties are pointed towards a counterfeit Google Chrome Extensions page, which offers a malware executable. More observant punters will notice that the download is offered in an .exe file and not a .crx Google Chrome extension. Such markers are easily missed, however. The Trojan horse malware on offer (identified by Romanian security firm BitDefender as the Agent-20577) blocks access to Google and Yahoo webpages. Attempts...

I was having problems with Firefox (3.6 beta 5) so I thought I would fire up Google Chrome. It comes to the Google home page. When I typed www.freerepublic.com into the address bar, I was delivered to, not Free Republic, but some sort of a junky looking site Www.FreeRepublic or something like that - with capital letters. Now when I went back to the Google home, I could search out the real FR. But their browser doesn't like us, I guess.

A radical new day has dawned for the operating system. Today Google finally aired its long awaited Chrome Operating System. The operating system was detailed at a press conference starting at 1 p.m. EST, and the open source code was posted online just before the start of the presentation. The new operating system brings a dramatically different look and perspective to the market and just may give Microsoft and OS X some tough competition by reinventing a tired old wheel -- the operating system -- offering the first laptop/desktop OS built around the browser and web applications. A Google engineer...

Hugh Hewitt, me, and a friend all had our computers crash while on the internet today. Rush had his MAC crash on Friday, two other friends experienced the same last week. I have had this Gateway desktop for three years and it has been absolutely bug free. However, in the last three weeks it has been surging then shutting itself down. I reset the settings on IE8 and that worked for several days. Today, complete crash and I had to restore my system in order to boot XP. Stayed in IE6 for a brief period then screen went ziggy and...

Heads up, Google Chrome-hounds. Version 2.0 of your favorite, lightning-fast, "anti-establishment" browser has been released, and it's quicker and more feature-packed than ever. That is, if you take the word of the massive corporation that designed it. Over at the official Chrome blog, Googleite Darin Fisher says that a few of the new additions were included in the re-beta-ed beta released back in March, but the new version does contain some new features and sports faster speeds and increased stability thanks to the proper squashing of some 300 bugs. One of the new, and predictably appreciated, features lets you remove...

6 Reasons Why Firefox Dude May Want to Switch to Chrome Apr. 21st, 2009 By David Pierce I did it. About a week ago, I took the plunge. I made Google Chrome my default browser, and now do almost everything within Chrome. I do miss Firefox every once in a while (after all, we were in a relationship for quite a while, and over a number of version changes), but I’m glad I’ve moved on. Chrome is only getting better – rolling out more features, making existing features work even better, and generally getting faster and awesome-er. Here are the...