By Sarah Hughes 

News Editor 

You might have noticed this semester how computers all over campus, in classrooms, the library and computer labs now have Google Chrome, in addition to other browsers.

When picking their browser of choice, students should care about which one they use at school and at home because of speed, security and user friendliness, which can vary between browsers. The addition of Chrome on CSUSM computers is intriguing.

Represented prominently on the toolbar, Chrome depicts itself with a red, yellow and green circle with a blue dot in the center. People have been excited for its release since Sept. 2008, which was originally for Windows. The first stable release was in Dec. 2008.

Chrome seems to be on a mission to provide a browser with speed, simplicity, security, privacy, customization and signing in, as their “Explore the Chrome Browser” portion of their product info states.

They seem to have found a market for themselves, as Google has crossed over into the mobile devices arena, with both phones and browsers. With the advent of the smartphone, computer preferences seem to be less presumed or pronounced. New names besides Microsoft and Windows are popular in the vernacular. Perhaps Chrome will be for CSUSM students now.

“Chrome is designed to keep you safer and more secure on the web with built-in malware and phishing protection, auto-updates to make sure you have all the latest security fixes, and more,”  Chrome’s Browser Features list said.

Mobile devices are still a growing place, technologically speaking. Many will report smartphones with hiccups and browser content problems, from a variety of characters. Most can remember a time when they tried to load a webpage on a supposed smartphone, only to have it fail or look unseemly. Many web pages were created long ago to work on non-mobile PCs. Chrome seems to be created to fill the space of a need for compliance in the realm of the mobile device. Whether it is an adequate solution, seems to be up to debate. With students expressing complaints about campus wifi, hopefully Chrome will serve as a sufficient browser for when they log in.

Infosecurity Magazine (online) reported in July 2013 that “there is no single ‘most secure’ browser, reports comparing the major browsers’ ability to catch phishing, prevent socially engineered malware and protect the users’ privacy show that no one browser stands above all others in protecting its users.”

They then cite “NSS tests” as showing no one browser as better in all categories tested. Infosecurity Magazine goes on to report the “NSS tests” as giving the following scores to browsers in “average phishing URL catch rate”: Firefox version 19 – 96 percent, Safari – 95 percent, Chrome –  92 percent, Internet Explorer version 10 – 83 percent. Though the browsers are relatively close in security, this puts Firefox at the top of the list, Chrome in the middle and Internet Explorer at the bottom.

Yet a Oct. 2013 Analyst Brief by Randy Abrams of NSS Labs, Inc. states that “Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues to provide the best combination of malware and phishing protection. The application reputation technologies used by browsers from both Microsoft and Google provide a significantly safer browsing experience than do browsers from Apple and Mozilla.”

Perhaps the problem is in the age of customization, many can’t agree on what’s most important to them in their browser and computer needs.