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Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

zdnet.com

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Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#51

Post by krageon »

progval wrote: post #49
mrspuratic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ESR user for many years, plus useragent-switcher for sites that pretend to care about my "security" (but mostly care about CSS eye candy and the latest whizzbang). Free beta tester for other people isn't in my job description ;-)

> plus useragent-switcher for sites that pretend to care about my "security" What kind of site does that? I'm on ESR too (from Debian's repos) and never seen anything like it

Specifically this example I don't know, but there are pretty big differences between look and feel on websites when sending a Chrome UA vs a Firefox UA. The most obvious example is Google.

Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#52

Post by staktrace »

omh wrote: post #22

I've been dealing with this bug for the last couple of days and it's been hugely frustrating. This was not a new version of Chrome or a software update. None of our software was updated at all (and we spent a long time checking!). But apparently Google have an ability to change a setting and globally affect the behaviour of all Chrome browsers by enabling experimental features. We carefully manage our software update…

As an admin why would you not also run the beta version of the browser in a limited setting? That would have helped you find out about this issue sooner, since the experiment was enabled there for a while.

Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#53

Post by robocat »

fps_doug wrote: post #47
Slartie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, I just set out to find the way to disable them. I thought it was possible, but I seem to have confused that with Firefox. Firefox calls it "studies", and you can easily opt out of them in the browser's options. Chrome (and chromium) calls the feature "field trials" and there doesn't really seem to be a way to opt out. I'm seriously baffled by the audacity of Google here. Seems as if the only way to actually get…

No no no. This is an isolated incident. Developers at Google are absolute Wunderkinds that know everything better than the stupid users out there, and never make any mistakes. Except this one time. So don't worry, just leave those field trials enabled, it won't happen again.

The reliability of Chrome is completely astonishing - why do you want to rip the team a new one for making one honest mistake?

Any enterprise that didn't have mitigations in place cannot legitimately complain about what is probably the most reliable piece software they use (adjusted for some complexity metric).

Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#55

Post by omh »

robocat wrote: post #53
fps_doug wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no no. This is an isolated incident. Developers at Google are absolute Wunderkinds that know everything better than the stupid users out there, and never make any mistakes. Except this one time. So don't worry, just leave those field trials enabled, it won't happen again.

The reliability of Chrome is completely astonishing - why do you want to rip the team a new one for making one honest mistake? Any enterprise that didn't have mitigations in place cannot legitimately complain about what is probably the most reliable piece software they use (adjusted for some complexity metric).

Chrome is a generally great piece of software and I admire many of the things that Google are doing with it.

The frustration here is that Google are operating outside the way we're all used to for software updates. If we update the software, we know to expect problems. So we can test it and (crucially) roll back.

If Google make changes outside of that then it becomes far more difficult to manage.

Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#56

Post by lordfoom »

cimnine wrote: post #34

If something is critical infrastructure for you, better make sure you have a backup. I've seen this in a Swiss government agency that has Firefox installed exactly for this purpose. Their main browser is the built-in one, but if it can't or must not be used (e.g. because of a zero-day threat), they can quickly roll out a change to make Firefox the default browser until the problem/threat is over.

>they can quickly roll out a change to make Firefox the default browser until the problem/threat is over.

...why not just make firefox the default browser full-time?

Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#59

Post by obituary_latte »

fps_doug wrote: post #47
Slartie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, I just set out to find the way to disable them. I thought it was possible, but I seem to have confused that with Firefox. Firefox calls it "studies", and you can easily opt out of them in the browser's options. Chrome (and chromium) calls the feature "field trials" and there doesn't really seem to be a way to opt out. I'm seriously baffled by the audacity of Google here. Seems as if the only way to actually get…

No no no. This is an isolated incident. Developers at Google are absolute Wunderkinds that know everything better than the stupid users out there, and never make any mistakes. Except this one time. So don't worry, just leave those field trials enabled, it won't happen again.

Reminds me - they still don’t allow developers to disable chrome auto-fill which renders typeahead/autocomplete functionality useless since the chrome auto fill covers up the typeahead dropdowns. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21238375

Re: Google Chrome experiment crashes browser tabs, impacts companies worldwide

#60

Post by user740372 »

Slartie wrote: post #30

I chuckled at this: > "Do you see the impact you created for thousands of us without any warning or explanation? We are not your test subjects," said an angry sysadmin. "We are running professional services for multi million dollar programs. Do you understand how many hours of resources were wasted by your 'experiment'?" Did you, dear sysadmin, pay anything for Google Chrome? No? Are you in any contractual relation t…

So no pay, no voice?
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