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Spotted this beauty in one of the RSS channels. Speaking of war in online advertising, it comes as a very handy argument.

Advertising: Microsoft vs. Google

Need I say more?

This Blog in Google Chrome

So the Google got themselves a powerful ally. Aside from heavily sponsoring Firefox Google has now created another entity of its own.

Not to bash Google in any way, but the product (even though it’s beta) seems scarce of features. My personal annoyances follow, but in general – I am overly satisfied with the way this new browser works. The speed alone can make up for half of the list below…

- I want to see is the status bar. Aha! It only shows up when needed – i.e. when you mouse over the link or during the page load process. Neat, but a little… unexpected.

- I want to block that annoying advertising. Please, give me my AdBlock! Now! I mean it!

- I am Firefox addict, so right-clicking on the link and choosing SECOND option must open new tab. I explicitly trained myself to avoid first option – to open link in a new window, I want my links in new tabs. Please, let me switch these options.

- Flock is a foul creature, a bastard son of Firefox and social media that no one wants to deal with. Please don’t use it’s annoying yellow information bars on top – I get enough of those in IE 7.

- I really miss all the progress bars… Even from “teh dialup times” those bars were entertaining – for all those moments when I was patiently waiting for page to load. My cable connection isn’t directly hooked into Tier 1 Premium Bandwidth provider, so I get to wait sometimes. Please, give me back my nostalgic piece of history…

- It’s 2008 for crying out loud. Why do I still have to go into settings and change default encoding from Western ISO-8859-1 to Unicode UTF-8 ? Is there any specific reason for it or the whole world just started speaking Engish exclusively?

- Last, but not least. Could you possibly change that annoying blue-and-white color scheme? No, green and white would be even more annoying.

There are couple of more issues I probably missed from the first glance, but overall I have a feeling that this is a very robust product with plenty of features to follow. It may look scarce on features, but doesn’t Google’s own first page look the same?

P.S. This post has been created in Google Chrome…

The Internet giant – which is now pushing into wireless services, has considered contracting with Space Data or even buying the firm, according to one person
…Google believes balloons like these could radically change the economics of offering cellphone and Internet services in out-of-the-way areas, according to people familiar with its thinking.

Right. Aside from numerous humorous comments on Digg (“Your internet has exploded”) there is a technical issue of signal strength. I just can’t imagine a balloon hanging low enough for regular WiFi to work. Unless it’s a airborne replacement for regular 3G/HSDPA towers – I don’t see that happening. If it is – I can’t even imagine how expensive it may be. Even for rural areas costs may still be prohibitive.