RockMelt: Google Chrome, Only Better

Barence writes "PC Pro has an in-depth review of RockMelt, a new browser which it claims is better than Google Chrome. RockMelt is built on the same Chromium core as Google's browser, but adds a host of social networking, news feed and search features that elevate it above Chrome. The App Edge, for example, 'allows you to set up feeds for anything from your Twitter or Gmail accounts to your favourite news sites, and get a little iPhone-style numeric reminder of the number of items awaiting your attention.' It does, however, lack Chrome's built-in Flash, PDF and audio players."

So...

[Anonymous Coward]

It lacks features that would make it a better browser (like the awesome PDF reader), and adds social networking an an RSS reader, which I can just get by going to the appropriate websites on any browser. Great.

Flock?

[wasabioss]

They haven't learned the lesson from Flock, have they?

I just want a goddamn browser, without any of the facebook twitter buttons and toolbars and shit. When I want to update my facebook status, I will get there.

Re:So...

[man_of_mr_e]

Sounds more like "Google Chrome, only Worse, much worse" to me.

Re:This is how marketing works

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Sadly enough, the payoff doesn't even have to be as exciting as that. Journalism, especially for second-string rags or random stuff blogs and special interest publications, suffers from a more or less continual deadline crunch. In addition to the usual pressure of getting the thing together in time for the next print run, you have the fact that they are trying to make up for their shrinking margins by extracting more words words fewer people.

Under those circumstances, a vaguely neutral sounding press release(already conveniently typed up and more or less grammatically accurate!), that can just be massaged a touch and turned in is a blessing. Gotta churn out that content, make the deadline, look productive. Since the number of journalists has been slowly ebbing over time, and the number of PR flacks increasing, it only stands to reason that a greater percentage of "news" copy will be written by the latter.

Of course, for stuff that actually matters, or has a big money ad campaign behind it, or someone who controls the precious "access", you can see more overt corruption; but for petty shit deadline pressure is actually a depressingly large part of it.

Plugin

[Maxx169]

Wouldn't the features described be more suited to a Chrome plugin (would that be feasible?) rather than a completely new browser?

Re:Big Question

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The whole topic sounds as if it could be translated: "Just like date rape, only better"

Re:So...

[Bacon Bits]

Does any body here remember when the Internet didn't suck the life out of you, and exhaust your will to see tomorrow?

Well, SlashDot was founded in 1997 and Fark in 1999, so... no.

Re:So...

[Count Fenring]

Flock is (was, at this point) built on Firefox, but it's the same principle. And no, no-one needs this crap. Anyone who wants social stuff built into their browser can and will do it with an add-on. Anyone who doesn't will ditch a browser for having it.