The Browser Company cofounder thinks it’s time to modernize the browser and reinvent the web.
The company now offers up to $250,000 to people who find, detail, and demonstrate remote code execution vulnerabilities in Chrome. That more than doubles Chrome’s previous top payout, which sat at $100,115.
[Google Bug Hunters]
As reported by Bleeping Computer, Google is testing a new experimental flag that can hide sensitive content while “screen sharing, screen recording and similar actions” in regular tabs — redacting the user’s entire screen if things like credit card details or passwords are detected.
There’s no mention of a release date, but it should be available for testing in Chrome Canary in the coming weeks.
A new option spotted in the Chrome 128 beta lets you search with Google Lens by clicking and dragging a box around the area of a website you want more information about. Google will then pull up search results based on the image or text you’ve highlighted — sort of like Circle to Search.
A new Canary test build of the Chrome browser (I see it in version 128.0.6611.0 in macOS) has a new performance alert to tell you when a tab is hogging resources, Windows Report spotted.
To try it, open the Canary Chrome browser, navigate to chrome://flags/#performance-intervention-ui, enable “performance intervention suggestions,” and restart. Now Chrome can complain about Chrome’s memory usage, too!
The head of Google sat down with Decoder last week to talk about the biggest advancements in AI, the future of Google Search, and the fate of the web.
The search giant says it will phase out third-party cookies in its dominant Chrome browser in 2023, no 2024, erm... actually 2025, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing “ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers.” That assumes the effort to better protect user privacy gets approval from the UK’s CMA and ICO which are monitoring implementation.
Sometimes I need Chrome extensions to do my job. Sometimes I can’t do my job until whichever one’s misbehaving gets out of my face. So please let this be true.
Also, TIL there’s now a paid version of Chrome for enterprise with extra security?
[Android Authority]
Gecko (Firefox), Blink (Chrome / Edge), and WebKit (Safari) are the engines behind most web browsers, and the developers who make them have collaborated on a new benchmark to measure performance with browsing and web apps.
Announced in December 2022 and already used to optimize the browser engines listed above, Speedometer 3.0 is now available to test “key scenarios” like rendering a news site — if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy doing.
Correction March 11th, 4:29PM ET: An earlier version of this post incorrectly swapped the browser engines for Chrome and Firefox, it has been correct. We regret the error.
A Chrome Canary update spotted by X user Leopeva64 (via Android Police) introduces a new “install page as app” button in the settings menu for all the websites you visit. You can try out the feature before it’s rolled out by downloading Canary and enabling these flags:
• chrome://flags/#web-app-universal-install
• chrome://flags/#shortcuts-not-apps
Following its announcement last month, 9to5Google notes that the latest Chromecast with Google TV update allows users to quickly pair headphones to their TV when in close proximity, and shows a new audio output switcher in the menu.
You can check to see if the STTE.231215.005 update is available by heading into Settings > System > About > System update on your Chromecast with Google TV.
As announced last month, today 1 percent of Chrome users will see a notification when they open Chrome on desktop or Android if selected to try Google’s new Tracking Protection feature. The Wall Street Journal has a writeup on what it could mean for advertisers, with some thinking Google’s moving too fast, some relieved it’s finally happening, and everyone waiting to see how it goes.
