Razvan Antonescu

I’ve been using Google’s Chrome as a default browser both at work and at home since it’s lunch. I was pretty aware of the fact that’s a beta product and that some additional stress is mandatory. But after 2 months I’m done. Switching back to Firefox.

Here are my main reasons:

1. Is 2008. No browser is an island anymore. I expect from my browser to be connected to web services and my browsers from different locations. Scared by bad PR Google has done no integration with its services (that’s if you don’t count Gears) and that’s a big down for me. Here is what Google could have done or at least offer the options for the users to enable/disable:

a) Browsing history. In IE / FF, if you have installed Google toolbar, Google keeps a record of your history online and makes that searchable from any point. Some might complain about privacy issues but considering my daily activities the gains are bigger then the looses

b) Bookmarks. Google has a pretty decent bookmarking service. Of course you can use the bookmarklet option but there’s no integration with the browser default bookmarking system. Kudos for Foxmarks on that.

2. Again is 2008. Every user has a wide range of browsing habits and patterns. You cannot make everybody happy and because of that you make your software extensible. FAIL. Maybe in time extensibility will be added and extensions will be created. But I think that’s a distant future we are talking about. Core extensions I missed during this period

a) Google Toolbar

b) Foxmarks

c) Stumbleupon

d) GTDInbox and Xoopit

e) Yahoo’s new Inquisitor (I wished for that from the moment I saw it available for Safari)

f) SEO for Firefox (DUHHHHH)

g) Twitterfox – this is the only app I use for Twitter. Usage pattern has decreased since using Chrome but that will be fixed from now

3. Plugins integration. That was one of the main causes of frustration and cursing. C’monnnnn is 2008 again. Make the god damn flash work. I’m depending on YouTube for my business and I’m a big fan of South Park, John Stewart and Colbert. Constant crashes (can’t remember if I ever played a clip without crashes), slow streaming and so on. Google Analytics is becoming unusable. And let’s not get to Silverlight that I need it for Live Mesh

4. Resources. Chrome is fast. Fast to lunch more precisely but that’s all. I was using DivxLand Media Subtitler that’s using my processor up to 99%. I cannot do anything on my PC and Chrome was dead. Not loading any page. Today I tried Firefox and works like a charm.

Conclusions

I won’t uninstall Chrome. But is not my default browser anymore. I’ll use it mainly for it’s incognito mode to login to multiple accounts without using all my available browsers (7 or 8 i think ). Perhaps in about 1 year Chrome will get better but so far Firefox fits all my working/entertainment/communication habits.

This morning I’ve noticed that Google Analytics had a slightly different user interface. Due to the fact that usually this kind of changes is associated with new features I rushed to check but with no results. Now Google Analytics blog confirms that this is just a minor UI change. Bleah. No goodies today 

Looks like Apple is not interested in Microsoft’s efforts to port Silverlight to Iphone. This could only mean that Live Mesh will never make to the Iphone either and through this we will never see an intelligent syncing solution between Apple devices and Web/Windows over WiFi. Too bad. But this is just another reason to wait for an Android power phone that I would like

If you have a US Social Security number or Tax ID and one or more english based websites, OpenX offers you the chance to be one of the publishers to try Microsoft Content Ads. More details here, and the registration form is here.

Launching a webservice today has become a pretty simple job. Launch a private beta, launch some teasers here or there, get a post on Techcrunch, attend to some conferences, make a press release and that’s it. You have a few thousands users registered to your website. And everybody is happy. NOT.

Not in a few days or weeks when you analyze your internal usage statistics and you realize that the visitors that have registered are not coming back. In that case there are strategies and strategies.

One set of strategies are to get back to the drawing board and see were you have failed. To see why your users were not happy and repair it. To add features that will keep the the users interested in you, to listen to your customers feedback.

And there are dirty strategies. One company has sent me today my username and password. As requested by me. NOT. It was my password but I couldn’t even tell what was that service about and when I have registered. Most probably because it sucked big time. It’s not a very popular service so I excluded the case where somebody has tried to brute force the account. The other explanation is that an internal bug triggered that email. But something makes me think that this was a marketing ploy. Dirty but CLEVER.

So. If you are in the position of having trouble with your users returning do this:

1. Start logging user activity.
2. Depending on your type of service set an internal threshold (let’s say 6 months)
3. Once an account has been inactive for six months, sent an automated email with BOTH username and password and make it look as it was requested by the user.
4. Analyze the results. See how many of the targeted accounts have been re-activated and how many of the re-activated accounts are starting to become active