Something I Didn't Realize and Don't Understand ...

Very few people use Bing. I knew it wasn't as popular as Google, but I didn't realize how huge the differential is until I clicked on a Statista link in an article by Cory Doctorow at The Atlantic: Nearly 90% of web searches are done through Google, less than 10% are done through Bing.

I've got Bing set as my default search engine -- if I type something other than a URL in the top bar of my browser, it returns Bing results*, and when I open a new tab it's Bing I see.

Why? Because Microsoft Rewards (affiliate link!), that's why. I've already redeemed my rewards points -- which I accrue whenever I search Bing, and for doing fun little things like taking quizzes and polls -- for one $10 Amazon gift card this year, and I'm close to my second.

I doubt that I'll manage $10 in Amazon gift credit per month 12 months in a row ($120), but I'll probably hit $100 for the year, anyway. Getting paid $100 a year to use a particular search engine is better than not getting paid at all. And I'm free to use other search engines when I think I'm not finding what I need through Bing. Which isn't that often.

I really don't understand why everyone isn't into getting paid to do what they're doing anyway.

* Anecdotally, I've found that when I paste the headline for a paywalled article into Bing, I'm more likely to get a link to a cached version of that article in the results than I am with Google.

Chromecast: Not a Review. Yet.

So, I've been considering one of them there "streaming devices" for my TV for some time, and finally decided on the Google Chromecast for two reasons:

• I asked Chris Pirillo for a recommendation and he took the time to do a whole video on the subject of streaming devices. His advice militated in favor of the Chromecast in my particular case because I'm a Google fanboy. I'll embed that video below once it's public. At the moment, it is private for his Patreon supporters. Hey, have I mentioned I'm on Patreon and seeking supporters, too?
• The Chromecast on sale for less than $25 at Best Buy this weekend.

But, you know, it's always something. Got the little box home, plugged it into my TV, went to the setup page, started following the instructions (I had already installed the Google Cast app on my Chromebox before going to the store) ... and ... nothing.

Turns out my particular router (Chromecast works over wi-fi, requiring the device and the controlling computer to be on the same wi-fi network) is not on the "supported routers" list. I did a little Googling and found examples of, and instructions from, people who got it to work. But those instructions didn't work for me.

Well, that's what I get for having a router that Micro Center moved into the clearance aisle about the time Constantine was having his vision at the Milvian Bridge. I've been meaning to upgrade routers for a long time now. I'd like a router with more range. I like to take the laptop out to the backyard gazebo but it gets a fairly weak signal there. And since I have several devices with built-in dual band wi-fi, might as well get a router that can take advantage of that as well.

So I saved $10 on the Chromecast, but now it looks like I'm going to need to shell out $50-$150 before I can use the Chromecast, and that's going to be awhile. The only real consolation is that I suppose the other devices I considered would have had similar wi-fi connection issues. Anyway, no review, yet, except to the extent that this problem is a review-worthy issue. If you've got an older router, don't count on newer devices working with it.

[Update: Here's that Chris Pirillo video I mentioned]

Why Bing Is My Default Search Engine

Two words: Bing Rewards (yes, it's an affiliate link -- if you use it, I get points!).

I am an apostle of and evangelist for nearly all things Google -- my computers are Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, my main email address is @gmail.com, I store my stuff on Google Drive, etc., etc., etc.

BUT! Bing Rewards.

When I search using Google, I get search results. When I search using Bing, I get search results and rewards points which I can redeem for gift cards at major online and offline stores and entries into various prize drawings.

I've bought books with my Bing Rewards  points.

I've bought pizza with my Bing Rewards points.

I've bought nothing at all with my Google Rewards points, because there's no such thing. OK, well, there are Google Play Rewards, and I do use Google Play every once in awhile, but the rewards points are available only via an Android app and I use Android something like twice a year when I forget how useless tablets really are for anything except reading ebooks.

So whenever I am casually searching, I do it by typing the search term into my (Google Chrome!) browser's URL-bar, which is hooked to Bing, and I rack up points.

Yes, I still use Google every now and again if I don't immediately find what I want through Bing or if I'm doing some kind of industrial-strength organized searching, but Bing is my first line of search because Bing Rewards.

So far as I know, this is the only area in which Google has ever, ever, ever lagged Microsoft.

The Dark Side of Chrome

Yes, I am a Chrome and ChromeOS cheerleader. Maybe even a bit of an evangelist. You hardly ever see me complaining about any aspect of the browser or the OS framework. But all is not well in Chromeland. Here are two complaints -- one minor in immediate effect, but both major in long-term implication:

1. In the beginning, when you opened a new tab in Chrome, it was beautiful -- you could do anything you wanted in the new tab, but by way of assistance you saw some tiles representing frequently opened sites, and at the bottom drop-down lists of "recently closed tabs" and other things. Marvelous. Worked like a charm. Absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to complain about. Then Google yanked that format and made the new tab much less useful ... but with just a tiny bit of work, you could revert to the better setup. And apparently lots of people did. So last week, Google made it impossible to do that, forcing all users to move to the much uglier, much less useful new setup. You can partially undo the damage by adding some extensions, but it's just not the same.
2. Now I'm hearing that the new Chrome beta (which I haven't seen yet -- I'm on the stable build channel, and apparently this is Windows-only at the moment anyway) restricts users to apps available from the Chrome store.

The first item is an annoyance, but points to Google having a penchant for exerting undue control over the user experience.

The second item puts Google in the same league as Apple with its "walled garden" approach of trying to tell users, in very fine-grained detail, what they can and can't do with their machines.

I was kind of amped up for the new Asus Chromebox coming out this month. Now I think I'm going to wait on that, because if things keep going in the direction they appear to be going, I'll be abandoning Chrome. And while I can certainly root my Chromebox and Chromebook and turn them into (fairly light) Linux boxes, my next piece of hardware won't be one of those kinds of units.

More on Where Windows Needs to Go

Last month, I opined that if Microsoft wants to remain competitive it's going to need to give up on the idea of selling operating systems. That era is over. Well, they seem to be getting with the program in a minor sort of way:

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is cutting the price of Windows 8.1 by 70 percent for makers of low-cost computers and tablets as they try to fend off cheaper rivals like Google Inc. (GOOG)'s Chromebooks, people familiar with the program said.

Manufacturers will be charged $15 to license Windows 8.1 and preinstall it on devices that retail for less than $250, instead of the usual fee of $50, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details aren’t public.

It's definitely too little. Whether or not it's too late, only time will tell.

At first blush, this looks like a considerable discount. But at $15,  the price of Windows would still represent 6% or more of retail price on its face ... and in fact, considerably more.

Why?

Because Windows is a fat, bloated, slug of an operating system that requires a more expensive hardware build to run on than does ChromeOS or a reasonably light Linux distribution.

Windows needs more RAM. Windows requires a more robust CPU. Windows has to have more local storage for its OS files.

So if I'm building a laptop for the average user -- who browses the web, sends and receives email, streams some media and not much else -- Microsoft is asking me to spend $15 more on the OS than I need to and spend more building the device itself in order to offer that user stuff he or she will seldom if ever use and almost certainly won't consider a high priority when choosing a laptop.

Microsoft needs to rethink its OS. If they're smart, "Windows 9" will be called ExploreOS. It will consist of a re-modeled, de-crufted Internet Explorer browser, the files necessary to boot that browser and initiate an Internet connection ... and that's about it.

Yes, that means the revenue model will have to change. The OS itself is no longer going to be a profit center. The profit centers will be "enterprise-level" web apps, cloud storage and tech support, increased monetization of the Bing search engine (and possibly of the browser itself a la Firefox), etc.

The era of selling operating systems is over. Period. The sooner Microsoft realizes this, the less likely it is to go down as the next FW Woolworth.

Finally, an Intractable Problem in Chrome

The Chromebox/Chromebook are kind of like Macs in the sense that most stuff just ... works. If you use Windoze, you're used to weird error messages and inexplicable system crashes. That stuff just doesn't happen much on Mac, nor in ChromeOS.

But, finally, more than a year in the ChromeOS world, I've run into a problem that doesn't seem to want to fix:

For quite some time, I've used a text editor called Sourcekit (in conjunction with Writebox -- that way I can have two editors open at once, which I need for certain things). One important feature of Sourcekit is that I can load/save files directly from and to Dropbox. But starting the other day, I get re-authorization requests to connect Sourcekit/Dropbox, and when I approve, nothing happens. I just get a blank tab, and the next time I open Sourcekit, I get the request again.

Writebox also integrates with Dropbox and is working just fine. But I tried out another app, Writekit, and got the same error (yes, I've noticed the kit/box/write ubiquity). So I'm thinking the problem is probably at Dropbox, not with Chrome/ChromeOS per se. Or maybe it's with my Chromebox in particular (haven't used the Chromebook recently); I think that may be the case because I haven't seen any recent panicked "why can't I ..." threads on the web about the problem.

Fortunately, there's an easy work-around -- I installed yet another text editor, Caret. It isn't integrated with Dropbox, which means there's some extra futzing around, but it gets the job done.

FTC Pushes Google for Immediate Bribe

Understand this, and understand it well: When the Federal Trade Commission "[presses Google] to offer to resolve the agency's antitrust investigation," there are no high principles involved. It's just a cash grab, plain and simple.

FTC even has its own internal "administrative court" where, as FTC Commissioner Jonathan Leibowitz points out, it can "wrap up the matter [of awarding itself lots and lots of Google's money] more quickly" than it could if it had to run things by people it doesn't, you know, employ and stuff.

If I were Google and other vulnerable enterprises, I'd consider establishing an arm's-length operation -- headquartered and operated from outside the United States, of course -- to keep an eye on FTC and start doing nasty things to its employees (with escalation of both severity and prominence of persons targeted as necessary), any time they cranked this kind of stuff up and until it stopped.

At this particular point in this particular situation, I think the FBI might have an anonymous tip in hand prompting them to get a warrant and pull Leibowitz's hard drives to search them for child porn.

But maybe that's just me. I'm not a very nice guy, nor very much disposed to put up with nonsense from bureaucrats.

I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means, Google

"[T]he most Mac users possible," that is, as in:

Google Chrome on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will stop receiving any updates following Chrome 21. This includes new features, security fixes and stability updates. If you're not sure what OS version you're on, go to the Apple icon on the top left corner and click About This Mac to find out. If you already have Chrome installed, you can still use Chrome, but it will no longer be auto-updated. In addition, you'll be unable to install Chrome on any Mac still running 10.5 (which is an OS X version also no longer being updated by Apple). While we understand this is an inconvenience, we are making this change to ensure we can continue to deliver a safe, secure, and stable Chrome for the most Mac users possible.

I can see dropping support for Mac OS 10.5 because you want to add new bells and whistles that MacOS 10.5 can't handle. As a Leopard user I may not like that, but I can understand it and it's honest.

But "for the most Mac users possible" does not compute. Dropping support and updates for a major MacOS release that a lot of people still use by definition means that  fewer, not more, Mac users will be getting safety/security/stability updates for their Chrome installations.

No need to blow smoke up my ass, Google.

A New Commenting Conundrum

I had a note from a KN@PPSTER reader (and frequent commenter) this morning. She's attempting to escape the long arm of Google, and is now finding it difficult or impossible to comment on blogs.

Right now I'm using Disqus here, LiveFyre  at another blog (not yet ready for prime time, really), and IntenseDebate at RRND.

The would-be commenter informs me that both Disqus and LiveFyre (I don't know about IntenseDebate yet) require the user to "allow" Google, even if the user isn't attempting to sign in using a Google account -- or, for that matter, sign in at all.

Yes, that's right -- even if you comment as "guest," or use your Facebook, Twitter, etc. logins to connect, it still insists on pinging Google for some reason.

Does anyone know of a comment system (a "universal" one, not one internal to a specific site or site software type) that doesn't require you to slave your identity to Google? Personally, I don't mind affiliating with one of the Big Guys for ID purposes around the web, but some people do and I prefer to keep my blog accessible to them if I can.

Google +1 WTF

I've not been using Google +1 very much, or for very long, but I just ran into something I haven't seen before: "Cannot +1 this page."


That's using my Google +1 Chrome extension button, which sits next to my address bar so that I don't have to look around for a button actually on whatever page I'm reading and want to bump that way.

As it happens, there's a +1 button on the page in question, and it worked. But I'm wondering why the extension didn't.

They still don't get it

Rob Hof writes at BusinessWeek:

First of all, let's put to rest the notion that Google expects to replace Windows, at least anytime soon. ... I'm not sure why Chrome OS couldn't be a second operating system on the same machine. After all, it's free, and both disk and flash-memory storage is pretty cheap, so I'm not sure I see much downside in installing both on a machine.

Don't see the downside? Here's the downside: $119.99 for the home edition upgrade to Windows 7. That's the low end of purchasing Windows 7 outright, and probably not much more than the cost of getting it pre-installed on a new machine.

With Google's announcement (obviously timed to prang Microsoft's rollout of a new, expensive product), The Era of Paying for Operating Systems is officially over.

That era could have, maybe should have, been over with the introduction of Linux, but there were some rough patches to get past.

To the general public, Linux and the open source movement looked like a bunch of hippies pushing flower power; Microsoft looked like the safe, solid choice.

Linux also looked complicated at first, and most people still don't seem to have noticed that, these days, most Linux distributions are now at least as easy to install and configure as any recent Windows version.

And, of course, there was that huge library of applications that one would have to give up to make the change (because configuring WINE to run them sounded complicated and scary).

What's changed? Everything!

Google is now perceived by most people as a "safe, solid choice" just -- like Microsoft. It ain't no gang of hippies pushing this new OS, it's one of the biggest players in the industry.

The new OS is going to come pre-loaded on new machines from major manufacturers, just like Windows used to ... and those new machines won't cost as much as their twins which come with Windows 7. If you want to install it on an existing machine, it will be free to download and damn near free to buy on CD-ROM.

Finally, applications are moving into the "cloud." Doesn't matter what OS you're running. As long as you're running a browser (and perhaps a plug-in, which the app manufacturer will certainly make available for all major browsers), you're good to go. Even Microsoft realizes this and is busily moving its own major applications online. Within a couple of years, that old Windows apps library (excluding some games) will be as obsolete, and of interest to as few people, as WordPerfect for DOS is now.

Look at it from the perspective of a business which currently runs hard-drive-based applications and maintains an IT staff to constantly maintain and update them. Soon, those applications are going to be accessed via the web instead of at the machine level, and the maintenance and updating is going to be done from the vendor side. Even if the licenses just cost as much (unlikely), the customer's overhead is going to go way down.

With the mere announcement of the new OS, Google has effectively destroyed one of Microsoft's two major profit centers (operating systems) and made a major dent in the second (applications). Google has a fighting chance at dominance of the "cloud" apps battlefield, and a dominating position on the one remaining battlefield, search.

WANT!

Google is entering the OS market -- code available later this year, appearing on a new netbook near you next year. For obvious reasons, the news puts me in a state somewhat short of orgasm but definitely beyond mere arousal.

I've been keeping one lazy eye on development of the Crunchpad, a piece of on-the-way hardware.

The Crunchpad is a touchscreen machine -- light, thin and inexpensive (it's supposed to sell for less than $300). Its default is a "virtual" onscreen keyboard, but it will supposedly be able to accommodate the real thing via USB. That's a personal hard line for me -- I can live with no mouse if necessary and the virtual keyboard sounds nice for being out and about, but I'm gonna need physical keys for everyday home use. I type a lot.

Forget installing apps to a hard drive; the Crunchpad is designed for people whose computer activity is 100% web-focused. If you want apps, you'll have to find them in the cloud (and for the most part, they're there to find). I believe it has a small built-in flash drive for caching and data storage, a la a netbook. Originally, the idea was that it would boot directly into Firefox (and perhaps include Skype), running over a Linux kernel ... and that would be it.

Now things seem to have shifted: "This is a Linux based operating system and a Webkit based browser." Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine. Chrome uses Webkit. Do I hear wedding bells?

I've been looking to move into a new machine for awhile now, but not out of necessity: I'm able to do everything I really need to do on my "obsolete" machine. Running a very light OS (Puppy Linux) even lets me do it fast. I'm not sure I'll fall for the Crunchpad, but something like it sounds about right and I'm willing to wait for the right combination of low price, portability and an OS that doesn't hog all the machine's resources for no good reason.

Update, 07/08/09: Dvorak thinks that Google is bluffing and that the whole point is to discommode Microsoft. He thinks that Android will be the "real" Google OS. He bases this conjecture mainly on the fact that Google usually doesn't "announce early."

I think he's wrong. This isn't about kicking Windows 7 in the shins to hold some prospective market share for Android. It's about convincing people that the Era of the Everything + Kitchen Sink OS is over, that both Linux and "the cloud" are ready for prime time (hey, Google says so!), and that consumers should kick back for a few months, save their money instead of giving it to Bill Gates, and await Something Shiny Coming Real Soon Now For FREE FREE FREE. Remember, Google is talking about the new OS being available pre-loaded on new machines next year ... they're releasing the code into the wild later this year. "Early adopters" will hopefully be running it (and raving about it) by Christmas.

Update, 07/10/09: Becky C. doesn't trust Google. I'm pretty sure this means she also hates America and likes to spend her evenings kidnapping puppies, stuffing them in sacks and drowning them. Or something like that.

[follow this topic at memeorandum]

Ba Da Bing!

I'm a fairly compulsive stat watcher. Just today, I finally saw what I believe to be probably KN@PPSTER's first three hits from Bing. Don't know if that means they only just now got around to crawling the blog or what, but new sources of traffic are, of course, always welcome.

Breaking Google's grip on search is obviously a daunting task. Heck, even with a search engine of my very own, I forget and default to Google 99% of the time. I've tried Bing a few times and will keep an eye on it. Wolfram Alpha is also pretty neat.

For those who were worried ...

... about the rather expansive terms in Google Chrome's EULA, Daily Tech reports that Google will be changing the language.

I didn't find the thing especially threatening in the first place as most of the stuff I post to the web is already licensed under similar terms to anyone and everyone anyway. And hey, if Google decides to assimilate all of us, it's probably a done deal. Better them than Micro$haft, sez me.

As a side note, I'm continuing to like and use Chrome. The final test was last night:

Could I produce an edition of RRND/FND in it from start to finish? The answer turned out to be "yes, except for one small thing." When creating the email editions, I generally do a copy and paste thingumbob, and in Chrome (unlike in Firefox) for some reason extra line breaks between the headline and the blurb text aren't preserved. So, I had to open up a Firefox window for about five seconds. Other than that, no complaints at all.

Liveblog: Chrome install

The initial download is 475k, preceded by this message:

The Google Chrome installer should complete in seconds and start your new browser automatically.

Well, I'm sure the Google Chrome installer will complete in seconds. The real question is, how many seconds? The universe is somewhere in the range of 4.247 * 10¹⁷ seconds old. That many, or some lesser number of seconds? The default assumption these days is that users are on cable or DSL, not 56k dialup. Mmmmm ... guess who's on 56k dialup?¹

Some small part of me rebels ... I haven't even taken the time to download Firefox 3 yet -- do I really want to invest this time in a beta on its first day out?

Well, yes. There's value in expeditions back into the fog-shrouded past of teh Intarweb, the early to middle post-BBS epoch ... a time when giants walked the Earth with nothing but their US Robotics 56k externals and spillproof keyboard covers between them and certain doom. Besides, it's for the children. We must persist. We are, after all, professionals.

And, well, there's no "cancel" button, just a progress meter. Twenty minutes into this, the download is about 40% complete, and that 40% looks to weigh in at 5Mb or so (I've been doing other things while I wait, so this is a Scientific Wild-Ass Guess). At 40%, I'm content to play Freecell, look up the age of the universe in seconds, etc., rather than invoke Ye Aulde Task Manager and put a stop to things.

Hmmm .... now the progress meter is back down to one little blue bar in a wide field. Problem? Or did I misinterpret the meaning of the ratio of the width of said bars to said field before? Maybe I should have downloaded that pre-release comic book that Google put out. I bet it says how big the damn thing is. Maybe it even has an illustration of a naked woman saying how big the damn thing is. "Oh ... it's soooo big!" Inquiring minds want to know: Was production of the comic subcontracted out to Larry Flynt? Alas, trying to download it right now would just leave fewer of Senator Stevens's Patented Intarweb Tubes free to ferry the substance over from there to here.

Thirty minutes. My ISP connection meter shows receipts of about 10.5Mb in this session, but of course some of that is due to other activity. The alleged progress meter is at about 25% now. No, wait, it's a few bars scrolling left-to-right across the field. This calls for for an Old Crow and Coke.² And I might as well post this and make it a liveblog now that I'm drinking.

Forty-five minutes:

Installer download failed. Error code=0x80072ee2.

There's a "help me fix this" link. I'm going in.

Forty-eight minutes in:

An error occurred while trying to install or update your application. While we don't have more information about the error at this point, [punt].

Fifty minutes in: Per Micro$haft, the error was a timeout. Let's try again. Be vewwwy, vewwwy quiet. We awe hunting a successful download.

[Queue Spongebob Squarepants fake French voice] One hour and ten minutes later: Hey, guys, I'm now blogging from Chrome! Watch, this will be really cool! [... he said, right before he tried to jump Snake River Canyon on an old Huffy ten-speed with two flat tires and a can of nitrous taped to each pedal]

A_S (see comments): it may have been a 43MB+ download for you. My connection meter showed a total of 22Mb of data received in the session, and that included more than 10Mb before the first timeout. Per your suggestion, I read the download.com article on the EULA/ToS (and I had already semi-attentively browsed the source of same), and didn't find anything that I preemptively can't live with. I do all my super-secret spy shit over on the Linux partition in Firefox anyway.

First impressions: Yeah, it is minimalist. So minimalist, in fact, that it's missing one of the most important features: A "stop" button. That just may cancel out one of the features I was most prospectively excited about, "isolated tabs."

When entering content, or proofing others' entries, for RRND/FND, it's not that unusual for me to have 10, 20, or even more tabs open. Over time, this gums up the works when memory that a tab used and then closed is not completely yielded back for new operations. "Isolated tabs" -- one of Chrome's boasted features -- is that when you close a tab, it's gone.

Thing is, I also have a habit of starting a page load and then stopping the load when there's enough content showing for me to do what I need to do. I haven't found a way to do that in Chrome yet. If it's there, it's neither visible nor highly intuitive.

Page load speed? Offhand, not as good as my current Firefox install (2.x.x) with the "Fasterfox" extension. But I may not be making a fair comparison, as I'm a creature of habit and much of the persistent imagery and such in the sites I'm visiting is probably in the Firefox cache, while it's all new territory to Chrome.

I was hoping that Chrome would be optimized for some Google-specific stuff. Especially gmail. I've been using the previous user interface because the new one loads slowly and some stuff (chat, for example) doesn't work (and it's gone from the previous interface). No dice. Same problems here as in Firefox.

I do like the "feel" of Chrome. It's not visually fussy. Very much a utilitarian toolbox rather than a friggin' full wall pegboard covered with wild stuff. I haven't really zipped it around the ol' proprietary media track, Javascript weirdness, etc. in a hard way yet, but Flash video doesn't seem to be a problem and my JavaScript-enabled Haloscan commenting and such work just fine.

I'll use Chrome as I have time to over the next few days and update this article if there's anything really newsworthy going on with it. I'll be interested to see how quickly theme and extension communities pop up, and what they can make the thing do.

[Brief addendum: Naturally, 18 of the last 20 visits to this blog are from Google searches on terms like "Chrome," "install," "error" and "timeout." Short term SEO tip: Blog on new stuff from Google as soon as it comes out - TLK]

[Brief addendum #2: Aha! There is a "stop loading" button. It appears on the little teat hanging off the right end of the address bar when pages are loading - TLK]

--

Notes

1. Cable upgrade, including Intarweb, is scheduled for the 16th.

2. Fresh out of RC, so Coke will have to do.

The waiting is the hardest part

The crew at Google must be jumping through hoops to keep the servers from crashing -- Chrome is supposedly coming today, and I know I'm far from the only impatient would-be user reloading their blog for updates and hitting the putative download link (I found it by searching on, um, Google) every 10 minutes. Right now, that link just redirects users to their own "iGoogle" home pages.

Don't know about you, but I'm all for the browser market being, for all practical purposes, split two ways -- between Firefox and anything other than Internet Explorer. The Chrome beta is Windows only, but Mac and Linux versions are allegedly in the works.

I'll update this post when the beta actually shows, and if I can get it, install it, and use it, I'll let you know how that goes too.

[Update: Thanks to Chris Moore (see comments) for a working download link. I'm going to liveblog the install in a separate post. Actually, I've been doing so in a text file, but I'm going to post what I have so far now, then update it - TLK]