A new Beta release for Google Chrome has been released which allows multiple sync accounts. Essentially this means that more than one person can sign into Chrome on a shared computer and have access to all their bookmarks, apps, and extensions. Anything you update on one device will instantly update everywhere, which is handy for numerous reasons.
Another neat feature of this Beta release is that if you share a computer with family or friends you can now each have a personalized Chrome experience, by letting each user sign into Chrome sync.
If you wish to obtain the new Beta release, the official Google Chrome blog states:
“To try it out, go to Options (Preferences on Mac), click Personal Stuff, and click “Add new user.” A fresh instance of Chrome will open, ready to be customized with its own set of apps, bookmarks, extensions, and other settings. A badge in the upper corner lets you know at a glance that this new Chrome browser belongs to you, and you can customize the name and badge as you like. Clicking this badge drops down a menu of all the users on that computer, so you can easily switch between them. In addition, each user can sign in to Chrome to access their own personalized Chrome across all their computers.
One thing to keep in mind is that this feature isn’t intended to secure your data against other people using your computer, since all it takes is a couple of clicks to switch between users. We want to provide this functionality as a quick and simple user interface convenience for people who are already sharing Chrome on the same computer today. To truly protect your data from being seen by others, please use the built-in user accounts in your operating system of choice.”
Personally, this is a pretty great update for anyone who shares a computer with someone else. Well done Chrome team.
While the web browser space isn’t typically the most exciting area, there is a quite a bit of hype around Amazon’s entrance into the market. The Internet retailer introduced Amazon Silk in conjunction with its announcement of Kindle Fire, it’s first tablet device.
The most unique aspect of Silk is the fact that it splits functionality between the mobile device and the cloud. Although others have done this in the past, Amazon hopes to take it to a new level.
Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC, spoke with WebProNews and told us that he actually wasn’t surprised that Amazon made this move. As he explained to us, Amazon is a leader in backend cloud services as well as cloud support capacity. The move was actually natural since Amazon also has a content-based motive with Kindle Fire.
“It wasn’t really a completely new idea, but it made perfect sense for what Amazon is doing,” he said.
Opera is the browser that is most recognized for the split browser, but according to Hilwa, its approach is different from Amazon’s. He said that Opera wants to make its browser available on every network and every device, while Amazon does not. Amazon is more concerned with making its devices extremely optimized and responsive as well as potentially allowing the browser to support its advertising backend.
Although Silk will not be released until next month, Hilwa believes that the technology behind Silk creates a lot of opportunities for Amazon. For instance, Amazon may decide to put it on very inexpensive devices that do not have a lot of processing. This would then allow it to put 3G or 4G on the devices, which is a move that Hilwa thinks would be “synergetic” for tablet makers.
“A browser architecture like this makes is possible to have real economical network consumption patterns that either Amazon pays for or the user pays for,” he said.
In spite of the excitement surrounding Silk, there are also some concerns. The browser leverages Amazon’s Elastic Computer Cloud (EC2) in order to allow for speedy information retrieval. However, to deliver this speed, Silk tracks the traffic patterns of individuals’ behavior.
“This kind of browser puts it in charge of a lot of information from browser users, and therein lies one of the issues with this kind of technology, which is that Amazon simply has a lot of information that you might otherwise keep cached on your desktop machine and not aggregated in any one place,” said Hilwa.
“Whenever one particular location/place/vendor aggregates too much information about people, particularly about you, me… a single individual, then there’s a danger that the information will get abused somehow. [There’s] something spooky about these vendors knowing too much about you and targeting you very, very specifically with the amazingly targeted advertising that’s based on a search you may have done… that’s a little difficult for people to swallow,” he pointed out.
Silk has an “off-cloud” mode that users can use that will prevent Amazon from aggregating information, but it’s unclear, at this point what the default settings will be. Hilwa told us that, while these are concerns, there are certain capabilities that could not be possible without such a browser.
Overall, he said that Silk has the potential to be very successful but that it was hard to speculate before it is actually released.
“This is great synergy for what they’re doing,” he said. “It makes a lot of sense for them. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see if this technology actually works in terms of when it’s demoed [and] when it’s actually available on devices.”
He also told us he could see other browsers makers including Google and Microsoft adopting this type of technology in the future.
“This coupling of backend clouds with frontend devices – we’re going to see more and more of that and more and more optimizations across it,” said Hilwa. “The browser is going to be the crucial link that helps that happen.”
Do the cool features of Silk outweigh the privacy concerns or vice versa?
Amazon made a pretty big splash yesterday with the unveiling of the Kindle Fire tablet and new versions of the Kindle. What many in the industry consider to be the most interesting news of the bunch, however, was that of Silk.
Silk is Amazon’s new web browser, which is exclusive to the Kindle Fire, at least for now. It’s not just another browser though. It actually has something significantly different to bring to the table, and I will be very surprised if it’s not launched to other devices.
Amazon posted the following video explaining it:
In a nutshell, Silk makes the web browsing experience faster, because it divides the workload between the mobile hardware Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). It’s explained further here.
Chester Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos put up a blog post talking about privacy concerns with Silk. He writes:
” All of your web surfing habits will transit Amazon’s cloud. If you think that Google AdWords and Facebook are watching you, this service is guaranteed to have a record of *everything* you do on the web.”
“In fact Amazon Silk’s terms and conditions notes that URLs, IP addresses and MAC addresses will be logged and can be retained for 30 days.”
That is in fact in the terms and conditions, but so is the following:
You can also choose to operate Amazon Silk in basic or “off-cloud” mode. Off-cloud mode allows web pages generally to go directly to your computer rather than pass through our servers. As such, it does not take advantage of Amazon’s cloud computing services to speed-up web content delivery.
So, it sounds like the privacy is there if you want it, but if you want to use Silk for the things that set it apart from other browsers, you should be warned of what Wisniewski is talking about.
Mozilla has launched Firefox 7 for Windows, Mac and Linux. It comes with speed improvements and tools for developers to create faster sites and apps.
“Firefox manages memory more efficiently to deliver a nimble Web browsing experience,” Mozilla says. “Users will notice Firefox is faster at opening new tabs, clicking on menu items and buttons on websites. Heavy Internet users will enjoy enhanced performance when lots of tabs are open and during long Web browsing sessions that last hours or even days.”
“New tools in Firefox make it easier for developers to build snappy Web experiences for users,” the organization adds. “A new version of hardware-accelerated Canvas speeds up HTML5 animations and games in Firefox. This allows developers to build more compelling and interactive Web experiences like Angry Birds or Runfield.”
The full new feature list is as follows:
Drastically improved memory handling for certain use cases
Added a new rendering backend to speed up Canvas operations on Windows systems
Bookmark and password changes now sync almost instantly when using Firefox Sync
The ‘http://’ URL prefix is now hidden by default
Added support for text-overflow: ellipsis
Added support for the Web Timing specification
Enhanced support for MathML
The WebSocket protocol has been updated from version 7 to version 8
Added an opt-in system for users to send performance data back to Mozilla to improve future versions of Firefox
Google released a new stable release of its Chrome web browser today, which brings improvements in security, privacy, and graphics.
With regards to security, Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology has received some enhancements. It now warns users before they download some types of malicious files. “We’ve carefully designed this feature so that malicious content can be detected without Chrome or Google ever having to know about the URLs you visit or the files you download,” writes software engineer Adrienne Walker on Google’s Chrome Blog.
In terms of privacy, Google says Chrome now gives you more control over data that sites store on your computer, by way of Flash Player’s Local Shared Objects. Google has worked with Adobe to integrate deletion of these objects directly into Chrome.
In the graphics department, there is support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS, catering to 3D effets on websites that implement them. That’s where the above image of the sheep comes from. You can check out the Chrome experiment with those sheep here, which displays how it looks, and how you can interact with the site.
The experiment is “Shaun the Sheep,” and lets you use controls to expand and shrink the video, rotate the scene, bring up a rotating carousel of videos, and turn on puddle reflection.
Google says Chrome has 160 million users. They should all be getting automatically updated to the latest version within the coming days. Google also reminds us of its six-week release schedule, and promises “many more improvements” to come.
“Fresh from the work that we’ve been doing with the HTML Speech Incubator Group, we’ve added support for the HTML5 speech input API,” explained Google software engineer Satish Sampath. “With this API, developers can give web apps the ability to transcribe your voice to text. When a web page uses this feature, you simply click on an icon and then speak into your computer’s microphone. The recorded audio is sent to speech servers for transcription, after which the text is typed out for you.”
You can talk to search, just like you can on your phone. I’m not sure how often this will be preferable from the desktop, but it’s a cool feature nevertheless.
With the new announcement, Google uses translation through Google Translate as an applicable example.
“Speech input through HTML is one of many new web technologies in the browser that help make innovative and useful web applications like Google Translate’s speech feature possible,” says software engineer Josh Estelle.
In other Chrome-related news, Google has been working with Adobe (and others) on transparency and controls for Flash Player’s local storage.
Google launched a new version of the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer. Google Toolbar 7 brings Google Instant and some new personalization features to the table.
“If you’ve used Instant on google.com or in Chrome, you’ll be right at home with Toolbar Instant,” says Google’s Allen Huang, Associate Product Manager on the Toolbar. “Just start typing in the search box and search predictions and results will appear instantly as you type, getting you the results you want faster.”
“This new version of Toolbar is simpler, cleaner and emphasizes what’s important to you. The tools that you use most will remain visible on the toolbar, while buttons that you haven’t used recently will be moved to the new ‘More’ button,” says Huang. “s you discover and use particular tools that help your browsing experience, like Share or Translate, they’ll automatically appear on the toolbar, making your most relevant tools easy to access. This personalization is stored only on your computer, so no information is sent to Google unless your usage statistics are enabled.”
The toolbar also comes with new privacy settings accessible from a single menu, where you can adjust your preferences for things like PageRank, spell check, and SideWiki.
The toolbar is available in English only, but will be available in other languages in the future. Current Toolbar users will be automatically upgraded over the coming weeks.
Microsoft announced the availability of the IE10 Platform Preview for download today. The company calls it the “first step in delivering the next wave of progress in native HTML5 support.”
“We built IE9 from the ground up for HTML5 and for Windows to deliver the most native HTML5 experience and the best Web experience on Windows,” says IE Corporate VP Dean Hachamovitch. “IE10 continues on IE9’s path, directly using what Windows provides and avoiding abstractions, layers, and libraries that slow down your site and your experience.”
“We’re about three weeks into development of IE10, and based on the progress we’ve made, we want to start engaging the development community now,” he said. “At the MIX conference today, we showed the new browsing engine along with several new browser test drives that anyone on the Web can try out.”
The test drives can be viewed here. New HTML5 demos include: strict mode, tweet columns, Griddle, CSS3 Flexbox Flexin’ and The Grid System.
The browser is facing rampant competition these days. Firefox 4 is doing pretty well (currently with nearly 80 million downloads) and Chrome’s market share continues to grow. Mozilla and Google have both boosted their release process to launch more versions at a faster pace.
Last year, Google launched an initiative to crank out new versions of Chrome very quickly. Mozilla seems to be trying to keep up. It’s been speculated that Firefox users can expect even a version 7 before the year’s over.
This is part of Mozilla’s “Rapid Release” initiative. “Mozilla plans to switch to more frequent Firefox releases in order to provide frequent improvements to users, without disrupting longer term work,” the organization says.
Firefox 4 just came out a couple weeks ago. It was downloaded 5 million times in 24 hours, and even got up to 9 million the day after the release. By April 1, downloads had already surpassed 50 million. Today, the number is going on 70 million.
One can only imagine that Firefox 5 will see a similar level of popularity, based on people simply wanting to have the latest. Of course there will be new feature, as well. Conceivably Tech seems to have uncovered what these may include.
There are 9 features revealed in the Firefox UX planning pages, but some of them may be reserved for later versions past 5, as the publication explains.
There’s no telling which features will be included in Firefox 5 at this point. The possibilities include: tab multi-select, a new tab page, standardized toolbar for add-ons, file upload monitor, home app tab (to replace home button), in-browser preview for files, taskbar web apps, identity management, and sharing features, which are expected to be part of Firefox 5.
The Firefox 4 web browser has proven to be a big hit for Mozilla. At the time of this writing, 52,204,769 people have downloaded Firefox 4.
Europe has the highest number of users with 20,365,540. North America has 16,688,275, and Asia has 9,247,750. Obviously these numbers will be slightly off, considering the downloads are rolling in faster that it takes me to type a single character, but you get the idea of what the markets are like.
At glow.mozilla.org, you can watch the number continue to tick upwards and get a market-by-market breakdown of the numbers.
It had already hit 9 million downloads just a day after it launched. This infographic showed how well it did in its first 48 hours alone:
The web browser market is as competitive as ever, as millions of people continue to download Firefox 4 and Microsoft and Google continue to improve Internet Explorer and Chrome respectively. Rockmelt, which puts the browsing experience on social – which most websites are already doing anyway, opened up to the public last month, and has now added even more social features.
New features for Rockmelt, which is based on Chromium (the open source fondation of Google Chrome), include improved Facebook Chat and real-time Twitter functionality. These come in the Beta 2 version of the browser, which Rockmelt began rolling out today.
It includes an all new Twitter app and a “view later feature, which appears as a function alongside the main URL field, allowing the user to bookmark a page, while tagging it to create running lists in the “View Later” app on RockMelt’s “App Edge.”
The new beta lets users leverage the real-time Twitter API, and includes full capabilities to view @ replies, lists and direct messages and Twitter Search.
As far as the Facebook Chat improvements, they’ve added a lightweight chat bar at the bottom of the browser window so users can easily keep tabs on multiple conversations at once.
“Our founding goal was to re-imagine the browser,” said Eric Vishria, RockMelt’s co-founder and CEO. “We’re seeing unparalleled user engagement and the new functionality we’re rolling out will make it even easier and faster for users to consume and share content, and connect with friends, all within a discrete design that delivers rich functionality without being distracting.”
Rockmelt also shared the following stats:
– On average, RockMelt users are spending over six hours per day in the browser and are sharing content every two to three days
– 65 percent of users have added multiple Apps to their App Edge
– Users are engaging with the Apps in their App Edge more than 20 times per day
– Users are having three chats via RockMelt per day
– Half of RockMelt users have added at least one Twitter account
Rockmelt Beta 2 includes support for Chromium 10, which includes speed improvements.
Mozilla released Firefox 4 for Android to mixed reviews. The above video makes it seem pretty nice, but there are more than a few complaints – among the biggest – a lack of Flash support.
“Firefox for mobile allows users to take the Firefox experience they love everywhere and minimizes typing with features like tabbed browsing, bookmarks, add-ons and Firefox Sync,” says Mozilla. “With a sleek new look that hides browser controls when not in use, Firefox allows users to focus on the websites they visit. Firefox Sync gives users seamless access to their browsing history, bookmarks, open tabs, form data and passwords across computers and mobile devices. Firefox also offers thousands of ways to customize the features, functionality and look of mobile Web browsing with Firefox Add-ons.”
“Firefox is up to three times faster than the stock browser on Android,” says Mozilla. “Major enhancements to the JavaScript engine make everything from page load speed to graphics to overall performance snappy in Firefox.”
Still, speed seems to be another one of the top complaints about the browser. While they’re not all bad, there are a lot of negative review pouring into the Android Market. Here are a few examples:
“A very very slow browser…”
“What a piece of crap. Slow and buggy. Crashes on Mozilla’s own spark site…”
“Not working properly on nexus s android 2.3.3…”
“Extremely slow on HTC desire, and even slows down the main system. +no pitch …”
“This browser is incredible in it’s idea, however, its functionality is very sadly lacking…”
Here are a few of the more positive ones:
“Well, Not bad but please add flash. Or reduce the very large RAM usage/download size.”
“What a gem! Long live fire fox”
“Great. Nice sync with desktop. I don’t want flash!”
“Extremely fast. If it is slow on your device you probably need a faster phone to run it”
“Finally a major browser that’s really ready for mobile.”
“Blows the inbuilt browser out of the water when it comes to speed.”
As a matter of fact, at the time of this writing, Europe is leading with nearly 4 million downloads, followed by North America with nearly 2.5 million.
The U.S. has downloaded nearly 2 million. In Europe, the downloads are obviously distributed among many more countries. Germany leads Europe with over 750,000 downloads, followed by Russian Federation, France, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland.
Asia accounts for over 1.6 million. Japan leads the continent with over 330,000 downloads.
Google announced some updates to the Chrome beta channel, and the arrival of Chrome 11.0.696.16 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux. New to Chrome 11 are: an HTML5 speech input API, GPU-accelerated 3D CSS, and of course the new Chrome logo.
“Fresh from the work that we’ve been doing with the HTML Speech Incubator Group, we’ve added support for the HTML5 speech input API,” explains Google software engineer Satish Sampath. “With this API, developers can give web apps the ability to transcribe your voice to text. When a web page uses this feature, you simply click on an icon and then speak into your computer’s microphone. The recorded audio is sent to speech servers for transcription, after which the text is typed out for you.”
A demo of this can be found below:
You can talk to search, just like you can on your phone. I’m not sure how often this will be preferable from the desktop, but it’s a cool feature nevertheless.
Google’s “sneak peek” of GPU-accelerated 3D CSS allows developers to apply 3D effects to web page content using CSS. Here’s an example from YouTube of a 3D CSS visual effects demo:
Then there’s the new logo. “Redesigning the icon was very much a group effort,” says designer Steve Rura. “Collectively, we explored many variations, tried the icon in several different contexts, and refined the details as we moved along. It was important to maintain consistency across all media, so we kept print, web, and other possible formats in mind. Once we arrived at a good place, we finished up the icon by resizing, pixel-pushing, and getting everything out the door.”
Personally, I kind of like the old one better, it’s certainly more 3D.
With big news from Google Chrome and Firefox, the browser war has been anything but quiet lately. Norwegian browser Opera has also positioned its place in the war with several recent announcements. At SXSW, WebProNews caught up with Charles McCathieNevile, Opera’s Chief Standards Officer, to talk about the company’s recent efforts.
First of all, Opera released the new version of its browser, Opera 11.10 beta, which is codenamed “Barracuda.” In addition, it introduced into beta a set of debugging tools called Opera Dragonfly. According to McCathieNevile, both of these developments have all the great features that users want out of Opera. He said that Opera 11 users could sync up features such as Opera Unite and links with their mobile browser to allow for bookmarks and other elements to correspond on both platforms.
The company is also making strides in mobile with the introductions of Opera Mobile 11 and Opera Mini. Opera Mobile 11 is a fully powered browser with a new, fast interface that enables APIs. McCathieNevile pointed out that the focus for Opera Mini was the user experience. Both Opera Mobile and Opera Mini are also optimized for tablets.
All of Opera’s new releases have improved support for standards as well.
In terms of what sets Opera apart from the competition, McCathieNevile explained that users could run the browser on anything and that their tools include a lot of functionality.
“It’s fast, it’s secure, it’s standards compliant, [and] it’s a top-quality, modern browser; and when you dig in it, you find just a whole lot more,” he said.
He indicated that the company was working on a TV offering too. Incidentally, the Inquirerreports that Opera has just announced Opera Devices 3.0, which is the newest version of its Web browser for TVs.
Because privacy concerns are always a big issue in regards to browsers, Opera is also working in this area. McCathieNevile said privacy has been a “key concern for a long time” for Opera. The user experience on Opera is encrypted to ensure that the user is not tracked or followed.
While Opera 11 gives users a clear understanding about what they’re connecting to, the browser is continuing to work on helping them better distinguish between trusted sites and secure sites. McCathieNevile also pointed out that users should have very simple and clear choices when it comes to their browsing experience. In other words, these choices need to be communicated in a way that all users understand.
He said that Opera would continue to work toward this initiative because it could be used to enhance privacy.
Google announced the launch of a new omnibox API for Chrome. This means developers will be able to do new cool things with the omnibox (the address bar in Chrome, which also serves as a search box).
"One of the most powerful aspects of Google Chrome is the omnibox, also known as the address bar," says Google software engineer Matt Perry. "You can type URLs and searches into one unified place and it all just works. With the new omnibox API, extension developers can make the omnibox even more powerful."
"The omnibox API lets extension developers add their own keyword command to the omnibox," he adds. "When the user types a query prefixed by this keyword, the extension can suggest potential completions and react to the user’s input."
He points to an example where an extension lets you search and switch between open tabs from the omnibox:
The announcement of this is quite interesting. Earlier this week, there was talk of Google looking at a potential UI design for Chrome that would actually eliminate the address bar. This was referred to as "compact navigation", and is explained on this Chromium Projects Window UI Variants page.
Would you use a web browser that didn’t have an address bar? A report from ConceivablyTech.com points out that Google is working on new user interface layouts for Chrome, and one of these would eliminate the address bar.
The publication’s Wolfgang Gruener quotes Google’s Jeff Chang as telling developers, "There are a number of UI / frontend efforts under way." Gruener reports:
Google is working toward an improved Chrome UI that could be even more radical and eliminate the URL bar altogether. According to the Chrome UI variants page, Google is currently thinking about four different layouts – with four different types of navigation: The classic navigation version, compact navigation, sidetab navigation as well as a touchscreen version. Google said that it is "interested" in developing all four versions, but current builds of Chrome “are focused on classic and compact navigation styles."
…
The most dramatic modification is something Google calls a "compact navigation" model. The idea is to eliminate the two line navigation layout which currently has tabs on top and the navigation buttons, menu and URL bar below. The compact navigation model would only have one line and place the navigation buttons, a search button, tabs and menus next to each other. The URL bar is gone and the URL of each tab is not visible at all times, but only displayed when a page is loading and when a tab is selected. In effect, there are now multiple URL bars that are integrated into tabs.
The idea for the compact design is apparently all about saving screen real estate for web content, something that Google has already prided itself on with Chrome thus far. There is another interesting element to this, however. Google says, "If we take the address bar out of the tab, it can be used as both a launcher and switcher; the user doesn’t have to worry about replacing their active tab. The current url shows while a site is loading, and can be edited or changed by clicking on the tab."
– Flexible for larger screens. Users can quickly toggle between this and classic navigation
– Apps can provide a better experience with full control of their content area
Weaknesses, according to Google, are:
– Current URL is not always visible
– Navigation controls and menus are not located within the tab and
– lose context sensitivity
– Crowded tab-strip
A lot of people are already using search as a navigational tool, so it’s not that far-fetched. With the current Chrome omnibox especially, it’s almost easier to must enter a query rather than a URL sometimes. The recent addition of Google Instant to the omnibox facilitates this even more.
We reached out to Google for comment, but the company’s offices are closed for Washington’s birthday. We’ll update if we receive a response.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced several new features for Windows Phone today in a keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. One feature is a "dramatically enhanced" version of Internet Explorer 9, which will become available for the mobile operating system in the second half of this year.
We don’t know exactly when we’ll see the fruits of the company’s partnership with Nokia, but that could be an indication right there. While nothing has been officially announced in terms of dates, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop did suggest that Nokia Windows Phones would come out this year.
Dean Hachamovitch, Corporate Vice President of Internet Explorer said, "We’ve worked closely across the Windows Phone and IE teams over the last few months to deliver the same IE9 browsing engine—the same code, the same standards support, the same hardware acceleration, the same security and privacy protections—for Windows Phone as we’ve delivered on the desktop."
"As a result, when you compare different browsers side by side using official W3C standards tests, for example here, you can expect very similar results for IE9 on Windows Phone and the Windows desktop," he added. "When you compare side by side browser performance, for example here or here, or running the FishIE Tank demo, you can still expect very similar results. You can also expect similar results comparing the security and privacy protections, for example here and here."
MicrosoftComing to Windows Phone in 2011: Twitter in the People Hub, additional SkyDrive support, Internet Explorer 9, and expanded multi-tasking. Visit Microsoft News Center for the full details, then come back here and share your thoughts.1 hour ago207 likes44 comments
Other things announced by Ballmer:
First Major Update
A free customer update will be made available for all Windows Phones in the first two weeks of March, which includes new capabilities such as copy & paste and faster application performance.
Availability on CDMA Networks
With added support for CDMA networks, Windows Phone will be available to even more customers on mobile operators such as Verizon and Sprint in the first half of 2011.
Twitter Integration in the People Hub The popular social networking service Twitter will be integrated into the People Hub in the second half of 2011.
Office Document Storage in the Cloud Document sharing and storage in the cloud via Windows Live SkyDrive will be added to Windows Phone in the second half of 2011.
Additional Multi-tasking Capabilities We will add the ability to switch quickly between applications, run applications in the background (such as listening to music), along with a number of other capabilities in the second half of 2011. Developers will learn much more about this during April’s MIXconference.
We had a conversation with Doug Wolfgram, CEO of IntelliProtect, makers of another behavioral targeting blocker. Wolfgram offered to share some thoughts about the announcements from Mozilla and Google.
"Mozilla’s ‘do not track’ tool is a great step forward in online privacy," he tells us. "The new tool provides consumers with an idea of how online behavioral advertising works, and also provides them with a tool to start protecting themselves online. However, the new tool is browser specific and won’t help consumers not utilizing the Firefox browser and also requires the consumer to do much of the leg-work."
"Google’s Keep My Opt-outs strengths and weaknesses are very similar to those of Mozilla’s new tool," he adds. "Generally, it is up to the users to install, update and maintain browser extensions – something most users can’t and won’t do."
I’m not so sure that most users "can’t" install a Chrome extension, and Google says users’ opt-outs will be automatically added to the extension, though they will be asked to allow Chrome to update it. But anyway…
"Many behavioral targeting companies are based outside the US – making legislation ineffective," says Wolfgram. "Right now, those within the US must voluntarily comply. Global ‘do not track’ buttons are too powerful and comprehensive. Consumers want control, but it has to be easy to use."
"Government regulation will be difficult to implement and enforce and market pressure is the best way to get compliance," he adds. "Industry groups that celebrate the ‘good’ vendors and expose the ‘bad’ vendors are most effective. Publishers are being left out of the discussion. For example, if the New York Times knew that a ‘bad’ vendor was publishing on their pages, they would drop them – with ‘bad’ vendors being those who will not support opt out technology."
Advertisers are in store for "a complicated life," he says. "Seriously. This is a hot topic and there are many different proposals on the table. Current technology for opting out DOES work and advertisers should strive to support it for now. They must also have agile development environments so that they may easily adapt to any new regulations that come along."
Mozilla says its working to get the header used by its add-on adopted as an industry standard. Google is open sourcing its extension, and is working to make it available for other browsers. Wolfgram maintains that his product is easier for consumers.
Google has launched a new extension for its Chrome browser, called Keep My Opt-Outs. It is essentially a Do Not Track mechanism that lets users opt out from receiving personalized advertisements as they browse the web.
"Recently, the Federal Trade Commission and others have expressed interest in a ‘Do Not Track’ mechanism that could offer users a simple way to opt out of personalized advertising," write Google product managers Sean Harvey and Rajas Moonka on the company’s Public Policy blog. "Advertising companies that are members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) already let you opt out of tracking for the purposes of personalizing advertisements, and many online advertisers and trade associations have also joined a major self-regulatory effort to enforce a uniform privacy icon for ads, as well as opt-out guidelines."
50 companies including the top 15 ad networks offer opt outs in the U.S.
The timing of the announcement is interesting, considering Mozilla just announced a proposal for a Do Not Track mechanism for Firefox, with the intention of having it adopted as an industry standard throughout the tech and advertising industries.
"We’ve been working on addressing these issues for awhile," write Harvey and Moonka. "Nearly two years ago, we engineered a solution for Google’s ad system. We made available, for all major browsers, a downloadable browser plugin that enables you to permanently opt out of Google’s advertising cookie, even if you deleted all your browser’s cookies. We’ve also built granular cookie controls into Chrome directly, and integrated Adobe Flash Player storage management into these controls. We’ve also modified Chrome’s incognito mode to ensure that it applies to ‘Flash cookies’ in addition to regular cookies."
If you use Chrome, you can get the add-on here, but Google warns that using it will mean you are likely to get ads that are less relevant to you.
Google is open sourcing the extension, and is working to make it available for other browsers.
Mozilla has proposed a "do not track" browser feature, which would allow Firefox users to opt out of any third-party ad-based tracking. Such a feature would work by transmitting a Do Not Track HTTP header with each click or page view in the browser.
The Do Not Track header builds on the work the advertising networks have done to date without the cookie-based systems they make available to people online. The advantages to the header technique are that it is less complex and simple to locate and use, it is more persistent than cookie-based solutions, and it doesn’t rely on user’s finding and loading lists of ad networks and advertisers to work. We’re not the only ones who think this approach makes sense. The FTC calls for a “more uniform and comprehensive consumer choice mechanism for online behavioral advertising. In addition, the HTTP header technique has been proposed before (see the good work by donottrack.us and the UBAO add-on).
The challenge with adding this to the header is that it requires both browsers and sites to implement it to be fully effective. Mozilla recognizes the chicken and egg problem and we are taking the step of proposing that this feature be considered for upcoming releases of Firefox.
A couple weeks ago, Mozilla made the latest Firefox Beta available for4 testing, as it works toward the final release of Firefox 4.
It’s worth noting, as Fowler does, that the header-based Do Not Track mechanism will only work if both browsers and sites implement it.
The feature is only in proposal mode at this point, and will be the subject of discussion among the Mozilla community. Mozilla also aims to get more of the tech and advertising communities involved, and make the header an industry standard.
50 companies including the top 15 ad networks offer opt outs in the U.S.