If you are reading these words right now, there’s a very high chance that you’re doing it in something called a browser.
If you searched for something to reach this website – possibly “american gangster,” a search term that accounts for a disturbingly high amount of the traffic – you did so in something else called a search engine.
Examples of browsers: well, if you don’t know what a browser is, you’re using one called Internet Explorer, which is made by Microsoft. Others are Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.
Examples of search engines: Google. Yahoo. Microsoft’s newly-rebranded Bing.
Here’s where it gets tricky: The same people make the Google search engine and the Chrome browser! And another group of people make Bing and Internet Explorer!
With all due respect to people of a certain age like my parents, if you didn’t know the difference between a search engine and a browser until now, you have a lot of catching up to do. And yet, not everyone in this video was middle aged. Some of them were in their 20s. I don’t really know how to react to that:
If you would have been one of the people making a fool out of yourself in the video above, the video below is for you:
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
B"H
BTW, when IS Chrome coming out for Mac? Any inside info? I signed up for the email notification. I heard there some alpha/demo version out there, but I doubt I'll bother with that.
Do you think it'll really be all that? What it got going over Firefox?
I have no idea when Chrome will be released for Mac. What’s available now is a developer version that is not meant to be used for regular browsing. I have used the Windows version a lot and it’s great, but it won’t displace my other browsers unless its feature set expands considerably, via plugins or official development.
The main thing it has over Firefox is its speed. A lot of people appreciate its stripped down interface, but that’s not so important to me – I prefer a browser that has all the features I want. I’ll be interested to see how the eventual Chrome for Mac competes with Safari 4 for speed (they both render web pages the same way, using Webkit).
Recently I’ve switched from Firefox to Safari 3.21 with the amazing Safari Stand plugin, which successfully replicates a half dozen Firefox plugins.
I’m older than most of those asked and I know. We have e8 (which I installed all by myself) on the pc and use firefox on the laptop.
I used to search with one of the smaller search engines until it kept sending me the page in Dutch. I finally gave up and use google.