After the German base rejected chrome as ‘unsafe’ and ‘unsecured’, their own techies have come up with a compatible browser using Chromium, the open source code for Chrome that allows offspring to be created.
The resulting ‘Iron’ is a Chrome substitute for German users that supposedly doesn’t have the security weaknesses they accused Chrome of. Of course, Now you have to take the German software publisher’s word for it that what they disabled was actually a threat, and that the ‘Iron’ version is safer…
Some of the most noticeable changes include:
* When installed, there won’t be a unique number delivered with the installation .
* The auto-suggest functionality available in Chrome’s address bar will be absent; therefore Google will not be getting such data,
* If any program crashes occur, they won’t be reported to Google
Entering the wrong URL will NOT serve up any alternate error messages.
* The timestamp feature available in Chrome was deactivated, so Iron won’t remember when it was installed.
* The Google Updater running in the background on Chrome will be absent.
There is some question as to whether removing such components as the auto-updater will actually compromise security, as privacy updates etc will not be handled as promptly – but hey, I won’t be using Iron, so I guess it’s none of my business.
Tags: chrome, Germany, Iron, privacy issues