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Jay Peters
Chrome can now show you reviews of the store you’re browsing.

Click the icon to the left of a URL and you can see a star rating and an AI-generated summary of details about the store.

“The description will cover topics like customer service, product quality, shipping, pricing and returns, helping you understand what to expect from your shopping experience at a glance,” Google says in a blog post.

An image showing Chrome’s store reviews feature.
Image: Google
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Emma Roth
Google Chrome will soon require Android 10 or later.

In an update on Monday, Google says Chrome 138 is the last version of the browser that will support Android 8 and Android 9, both of which were released over five years ago. The browser will continue to work on these versions, but it won’t receive additional updates.

Chrome 139 and up will require at least Android 10 when it launches in August.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome
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The head of Google discusses the next AI platform shift and how it could change how we use the internet forever.

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Jess Weatherbed
Companies can brand their Chrome accounts now.

The circular account icon at the top right of the browser has been updated for Chrome Enterprise users. Companies can now add the workplace name beside their staffer’s user icon — making it easier to identify for people who jump between several Google accounts.

A GIF showing the difference between branded and unbranded Chrome profiles.
A small but welcome change for anyone using the same image between different Chrome profiles.
GIF: Google
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Andrew Liszewski
It’s hard to think of a worse way to play Pong than 240 browser tabs.

If you find yourself with a hankering for retro gaming and only have access to a macOS computer running Google Chrome, developer Nolen Royalty has created a painful way to play Pong, as spotted by Tom’s Hardware.

You can download Faviconic, described by Royalty as “a tool for running games inside your tab bar,” from GitHub, but performance appears to be absolutely abysmal once gameplay transitions into hundreds of favicons.

Pong being played across hundreds of Chrome browser tabs.
Developer Nolen Royalty has shared the source code for a tool that can play Pong across 240 Chrome browser tabs on macOS.
Image: Nolen Royalty
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Sean Hollister
Google’s latest Chromebook update adds bounce keys for people with tremors.

Good news for Joe Joyce and other assistive technologists who help students and computer users around the world: ChromeOS now supports Bounce keys, which ignore repeated keystrokes if you accidentally tap them too much within your specified amount of time. It’s part of the ChromeOS M133 update.

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Wes Davis
A Chrome extension lets you change the Gulf of America back.

Following the Gulf’s name change in Google Maps last week, Developer Bryce Bostwick created the Restore the Gulf of Mexico extension to revert it back, which he says in a YouTube video is “the world’s smallest form of protest.”

Its Chrome Web Store listing says it could take a few refreshes to work, though it only took one for me.

Fix the Gulf

[fixthegulf.com]

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Andrew Liszewski
TabBoo uses random jump scares to keep you off sites you find too distracting.

Is there a website you can’t stop visiting that’s killing your productivity? A new Chrome extension called TabBoo’s solution is to randomly trigger full screen jump scares and use aversive conditioning to deter you from returning.

There’s a sound effects option to enhance the trauma, and a probability slider increasing the chances a jump scare will appear.

A screenshot of the TabBoo Chrome extension’s interface.
TabBoo lets you create a list of websites you’re trying to avoid and includes options for sound effects and adjust the probability that a jump scare will appear.
Screenshot: TabBoo
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Elizabeth Lopatto
The appeal to AI has inspired a Chrome extension.

My little article about the increasing phenomenon of people saying, “I asked ChatGPT” inspired Rob Dubbin to create a Chrome extension. It replaces references to ChatGPT with “my stupid friend.”

My Stupid Friend - Chrome Web Store

[chromewebstore.google.com]

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Wes Davis
Chrome’s “link to highlight” feature could work for PDFs soon.

A recent Chromium build suggests Chrome could get support for linking directly to highlighted text in PDFs just like you can on a normal webpage, writes code sleuth Leopeva64 in a post that Bleeping Computer spotted.

As a person who has tried too many times to copy links to highlighted text in PDFs only to be disappointed, I’m thrilled.

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Jess Weatherbed
Samsung’s Chrome extension is busted because of an expired domain.

The Samsung Internet extension, which allows users to sync bookmarks between their phones and computers, currently redirects to a webpage that says the domain is up for sale.

The extension has reportedly been broken since at least October 29th — if Samsung itself hasn’t noticed until now, we can only hope that scammers and other bad actors haven’t either.