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I love Chrome, but I hate silent updates. The majority of Chrome users have no idea that their browser is silently updating itself without their knowledge or c

I love Chrome, but I hate silent updates. The majority of Chrome users have no idea that their browser is silently updating itself without their knowledge or consent, and if they did, they wouldn't have any idea how to shut it off. I can think of plenty of cases where most users would want to turn it off—tethered to a slow data network, throttled bandwidth, etc—but the precedent it sets bothers me more than any hypothetical inconvenience. It's like I'm suddenly, unknowingly leasing a little space on my machine to Google, and I'm not always sure what they're installing.

div 16y ago
I love the silent updates. You raise a valid point about not knowing exactly what is being installed, but the flip side of the coin is that security fixes and new feature support get adopted much faster. It's nice knowing that mom's laptop will automatically receive that security patch.
- rkudeshi 16y ago
  > It's nice knowing that mom's laptop will automatically receive that security patch. Even though I still use Firefox personally, this is why I've transitioned every family member to Chrome.
  - badwetter 16y ago
    As have I. When you have to support other people it just makes sense (silent update).
- willifred 16y ago
  Security and convenience at the expense of control and privacy. I like knowing what's installed on my computer. I realize that I'm going to have to go into the future kicking and screaming.
  - albertzeyer 16y ago
    You know what's installed on your computer. Chrome updates. The only thing which you don't really know anymore is when or to what version it is currently updating. But why would you care anyway about that.
    - willifred 16y ago
      Because it's a usurpation of my role as the administrator of my system. Because it necessitates a level of comfort with a company—whose business model is based on collecting and selling user data—rooting my system, and trusting that they're not going to abuse that privilege, or forget my best interest when acting in their own best interest. I think that's a good enough reason.
      - div 16y ago
        That is a good reason. It's also possible to turn off the autoupdates. It's debatable what the best default setting would be, and wether or not average users: a) know how to disable this b) care to disable it Like you say, it necessitates a level of comfort with a company. I suppose most people don't give this a lot of thought, and thus feel pretty comfortable with any company. Wether this is "good" or "bad" is a separate discussion imo.
  - Silhouette 16y ago
    I think the problem here is the "one size fits all" assumption of the Google-centric future the article describes. The browser update policy is a great example. Probably the world would be a better place on average if mom and pop auto-updated, but the policy has serious downsides. For one, it's a pain for me as a geek who likes to know what is running on his machine (and who, frankly, doesn't trust Google as far as he could throw it). It's also a pain for me as a web developer, because of the various breaking changes Google is demonstrably willing to make in its browser, as discussed in several recent HN threads. There are other problems with "one size fits all" that I think undermine the entire premise of the article, though. If Chrome is to be the new OS, then does that mean every application front-end in the world has to be written in JavaScript? On the evidence to date, this is not going to be a success... Similarly, "[Google App Engine] just runs the code you give it, and you don’t much care how" sounds like a great argument, until you realise that you have to write your code using the tiny fraction of the available programming tools that happen to be supported by GAE. Given that in this business, the two most common scenarios are keeping geek opinion on your side or your company failing rather horribly, I think we can safely assume that nothing Google offers today is even close to comprehensive enough to displace native apps and make cloud/browser software the norm. Oh, and if the article author thinks that broadband-speed wireless is going to become as ubiquitous as electricity within a few years, I think he probably needs to go back to physics school. :-)
eklitzke 16y ago
The updates are really small. As they've detailed in a number of blog posts, the patch format is a custom binary diff that understands the format of ELF/EXE/etc. file formats to get the smallest diffs possible. Also, on Linux systems Chrome does not automatically update. When you download the deb/rpm from Google it sets up a package repository (e.g. by adding a file like /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo) and you get updates via the usual package update mechanism on your system. I have no idea if this will ever happen, but it seems like if there was a better integrated update system for OS X and Windows then Chrome on those systems could have an option to work in a similar way.
- Fargren 16y ago
  It's not really the size but the principle of it. Google is installing something on my PC without asking me about it. Ev6en if in this case the result is good, it's not the kind of thing a program should do. I know that when one installs Chrome, they are implicitly accepting that it will update itself, but it still is a very unique behaviour that wouldn't be accepeted in most programs.
  - Joeri 16y ago
    When gmail rolls out an update, do you want to pre-approve it also? The only thing google does with chrome is bring the web model of automatic updates to a desktop app. If you think about it, the only reason we want the control is because we don't trust software companies not to mess up our system. The crazy thing is wanting manual updates, because it implies gross incompetence from the software industry.
    - shadowfox 16y ago
      > When gmail rolls out an update, do you want to pre-approve it also? Well. Gmail doesn't actually install anything on your machine.
      - Joeri 16y ago
        How does that make a meaningful difference? You rely on their code, and they have access to your data.

div 16y ago

I love the silent updates. You raise a valid point about not knowing exactly what is being installed, but the flip side of the coin is that security fixes and new feature support get adopted much faster. It's nice knowing that mom's laptop will automatically receive that security patch.

rkudeshi 16y ago
> It's nice knowing that mom's laptop will automatically receive that security patch. Even though I still use Firefox personally, this is why I've transitioned every family member to Chrome.
- badwetter 16y ago
  As have I. When you have to support other people it just makes sense (silent update).
willifred 16y ago
Security and convenience at the expense of control and privacy. I like knowing what's installed on my computer. I realize that I'm going to have to go into the future kicking and screaming.
- albertzeyer 16y ago
  You know what's installed on your computer. Chrome updates. The only thing which you don't really know anymore is when or to what version it is currently updating. But why would you care anyway about that.
  - willifred 16y ago
    Because it's a usurpation of my role as the administrator of my system. Because it necessitates a level of comfort with a company—whose business model is based on collecting and selling user data—rooting my system, and trusting that they're not going to abuse that privilege, or forget my best interest when acting in their own best interest. I think that's a good enough reason.
    - div 16y ago
      That is a good reason. It's also possible to turn off the autoupdates. It's debatable what the best default setting would be, and wether or not average users: a) know how to disable this b) care to disable it Like you say, it necessitates a level of comfort with a company. I suppose most people don't give this a lot of thought, and thus feel pretty comfortable with any company. Wether this is "good" or "bad" is a separate discussion imo.
- Silhouette 16y ago
  I think the problem here is the "one size fits all" assumption of the Google-centric future the article describes. The browser update policy is a great example. Probably the world would be a better place on average if mom and pop auto-updated, but the policy has serious downsides. For one, it's a pain for me as a geek who likes to know what is running on his machine (and who, frankly, doesn't trust Google as far as he could throw it). It's also a pain for me as a web developer, because of the various breaking changes Google is demonstrably willing to make in its browser, as discussed in several recent HN threads. There are other problems with "one size fits all" that I think undermine the entire premise of the article, though. If Chrome is to be the new OS, then does that mean every application front-end in the world has to be written in JavaScript? On the evidence to date, this is not going to be a success... Similarly, "[Google App Engine] just runs the code you give it, and you don’t much care how" sounds like a great argument, until you realise that you have to write your code using the tiny fraction of the available programming tools that happen to be supported by GAE. Given that in this business, the two most common scenarios are keeping geek opinion on your side or your company failing rather horribly, I think we can safely assume that nothing Google offers today is even close to comprehensive enough to displace native apps and make cloud/browser software the norm. Oh, and if the article author thinks that broadband-speed wireless is going to become as ubiquitous as electricity within a few years, I think he probably needs to go back to physics school. :-)

eklitzke 16y ago

The updates are really small. As they've detailed in a number of blog posts, the patch format is a custom binary diff that understands the format of ELF/EXE/etc. file formats to get the smallest diffs possible. Also, on Linux systems Chrome does not automatically update. When you download the deb/rpm from Google it sets up a package repository (e.g. by adding a file like /etc/yum.repos.d/google-chrome.repo) and you get updates via the usual package update mechanism on your system. I have no idea if this will ever happen, but it seems like if there was a better integrated update system for OS X and Windows then Chrome on those systems could have an option to work in a similar way.

Fargren 16y ago
It's not really the size but the principle of it. Google is installing something on my PC without asking me about it. Ev6en if in this case the result is good, it's not the kind of thing a program should do. I know that when one installs Chrome, they are implicitly accepting that it will update itself, but it still is a very unique behaviour that wouldn't be accepeted in most programs.
- Joeri 16y ago
  When gmail rolls out an update, do you want to pre-approve it also? The only thing google does with chrome is bring the web model of automatic updates to a desktop app. If you think about it, the only reason we want the control is because we don't trust software companies not to mess up our system. The crazy thing is wanting manual updates, because it implies gross incompetence from the software industry.
  - shadowfox 16y ago
    > When gmail rolls out an update, do you want to pre-approve it also? Well. Gmail doesn't actually install anything on your machine.
    - Joeri 16y ago
      How does that make a meaningful difference? You rely on their code, and they have access to your data.