I was seduced by the blaze of publicity for Google Chrome, and for some reason, I’ve carried on using it.  It crashes less often than Firefox, and I do like some of the features.  Like, if you open a new tab from an existing tab, it places that one next to the one you’re using rather than at the end.  I like the “these are the websites you use most often.”  It feels very slightly better than Firefox, so I haven’t gone back.

What I miss, however, is manifold.  I miss all the plugins for starters – no more little weather icons at the bottom corner.  No little thingie telling me which of my google accounts needs my attention, and then helpfully logging me into the wrong one.  No little thingie telling me about new tweets, so now I actually have to the check the twitter website, off my own bat, to see what’s going on.

But what I miss most of all is the thingie that blocks ads appearing.  Clearly I use it wisely – libdemvoice.org is entirely ad-funded, for example, so I turn it off for that. But for most sites, I had the thing on full throttle, and was rarely vexed by advertising. Google Chrome has advertising aplenty – and why would they change it, when they make so much money from ads themselves?  

Now I am Chroming most of the time, I see all the ads again.  And they know me too well.  Quite apart from endlessly showing me the LibDemVoice google ad I placed myself, Facebook is full of bright-toothed tanned hotties exhorting me to go on a gay cruise.  And every recipe site I look at is full of diet pill ads, and steps to a flatter stomach.  Oi, fat gay!  Eat these pills, get on this boat.  Bah.  Enough!