Google Silently Installed Tools that can listen to Conversation around you when your computer is switched on to cater for “OK Google”

Google has quietly installed software which can listen to whatever conversations being held in surrounding your computer when the computer is on. This is actually to cater for the new feature for Chrome whereby if somebody says “OK, Google” in front of the computer then it can respond to it. However, this is considered as a breach of privacy as it is activated without the user’s permission.

The issue first spotted by open source developers, Chromium browser, which is the open source basis for Google Chrome. According to Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate party founder, in a blog post, that without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that able to turn on microphone and able to actively listen to your room. This means that what was being said in your room was being sent to somebody else or some private company in another country and it is sent without your consent and under unknown or unverifiable set of conditions.

“We don’t know and can’t know what this black box does”, said Falkvinge.

Google, on the other hand, has responded to the complaints in its developer boards by admitting that they do download the hotword module on startup but they do not activate it unless the users opt in to hotwording. On top of that Google also blamed Linux distribution Debian for downloading the black box of code with Chromium automatically instead of using Google Chrome.

Chromium is not a Google product therefore; the company does not directly distribute it or ensure that it is compliant to various open source policies. However, Google ensure that it is not listening to the users’ conversations and that the feature of saying “OK, Google” in front of Google homepage and Google will automatically responds to whatever you are saying without having the need for you to type in your request is only available if you choose to opt in to the feature.

Google Silently Installed Tools that can listen to Conversation around you when your computer is switched on to cater for “OK Google”

Google Chrome Latest Update comes with Network Quality Estimator and Offline Browsing

In the latest Google Chrome update, it will come with a few new features, Offline Browsing and Network Quality Estimator. These two new features is useful in the event whereby the network quality is not so good in a certain area, especially in the developing countries.

Normally when you open a page using Google Chrome, it will connect to the internet and fetches the latest information from the server and display it to your screen. With the Offline Browsing feature, it will download the content of the website to your computer so that when you access it without the internet connection; you should not feel any difference between the two of them. Currently this feature is already available in Internet Explorer and Firefox. This feature is useful for website content such as cooking recipe or bus schedule information.

The other new feature, Network Quality Estimator, it will analyze the network connection to optimize the search results or any website so that the content like text and information will be loaded first before the image which require more bandwidth. Hopefully the waiting time to load the entire content for the website can be shorten eventhough the data network quality is not so good in the area.

These two new features are announced in the Google I/O Conference this year by Google’s VP of Engineering, Jen Fitzpatrick among all other new features or hardware which the company going to implement in the near future.

Google Chrome Latest Update comes with Network Quality Estimator and Offline Browsing

Google Chrome drains battery life of the new 13” MacBook Pro Retina Display too

Google Chrome is one of the top web browsers available but in case of Apple’s MacBook, it is always advised not to use Chrome as it drains Mac’s battery life faster. Using Apple’s own Safari browser instead, improves MacBook’s battery life by over three hours!

When The Verge ran its usual battery tests on Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, they found that the battery lasted much longer when the Safari browser was used. For the tests, the MacBook’s screen was set to 65% brightness and it was made to cycle through several websites until the battery died out.

When the native Safari browser was used, the battery of MacBook Pro lasted for 13 hours and 18 minutes but when Chrome was used, its battery gave out after 9 hours and 45 minutes only. Thus we can see that the Mac’s battery drained out about 3 and 1/2 hours early with Chrome proving that although it is a great browser, it is not as efficient on Mac as the Safari.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is insane,” writes The Verge. “It’s the same exact computer. The battery, the processor, the memory — nothing changes but the web browser and the MacBook’s endurance is suddenly scythed down by a whopping three and a half hours.”

It is not only the battery life, the speed and quality obtained with Chrome was also not as good as the Safari. When the SunSpider browser benchmark test was run on MacBook pro, Safari clocked 144ms which was 30% faster than Chrome which clocked 203ms. Even the new 4K, 60fps videos of Google’s own YouTube are not playable properly in Mac on Chrome but the same videos play very nicely on Safari.

It seems that both Apple and Google are to blame for this sorry state of affairs. Apple, because it wants to promote its own Safari browser as being the most fast, efficient and ideal browser and will always keep it optimized even for the latest OS X platform. However, 3 and 1/2 hours is a bit too much and Google needs to address this issue on a priority basis as Chrome has never worked properly on MacBooks.

Google Chrome drains battery life of the new 13” MacBook Pro Retina Display too