Mmmm... Chrome...

It turns out that I'm a big Google fan.  I'm a little bit surprised by this, mostly because when I first started using the internet, there was no Google.  My first preferred search engine was Yahoo, my first webmail was some little company that no longer exists, my first browser was Netscape Navigator, and I don't think anyone had really thought much about blogs, much less created something like Blogger.  Wow.  I just looked at all of that, and I feel REALLY old. One of the first things I downloaded was a .txt file of the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail... I'm sure you can find that very easily as a PDF now.

I digress.  As I was saying, I'm a big Google fan.  I didn't expect to be.  I stuck with Yahoo search for a really long time, but finally realized that Google was just as good, if not better, and the Google homepage was much more pleasant to look at and navigate through.  I've had Hotmail and Yahoo mail accounts, but I love my Gmail account.  Again, it's pretty and it's easy.  I'm a smart cookie - I can manage with just about anything that's thrown at me, but I don't like having to fight my way through my inbox if I can avoid it.

Now, I've discovered Chrome, Google's web browser.  I like.  I've been playing with different browsers lately - IE came on my computer, of course, but I got an updated version of Netscape, I've tried Safari, and a couple of others that I can't think of off the top of my head.  I wasn't really happy with the whole tab thing in IE when it first came out, but I've become accustomed to it.  I really enjoy the Chrome setup, though.  It was beautiful to set up - it automatically snagged my bookmarks and favourites from IE.  The startup screen gives screenshots of recently visited pages, so if I've been searching around for something but can't remember the site where I saw it, I've actually got a visual reminder of where I was.  This works well with my visual memory :)

I feel like a corporate whore... but I really am impressed with most of the products associated with Google.  So congratulations, Google!  (I didn't mean to write an ad!  Really, I swear!)