The Samsung Internet extension, which allows users to sync bookmarks between their phones and computers, currently redirects to a webpage that says the domain is up for sale.
The extension has reportedly been broken since at least October 29th — if Samsung itself hasn’t noticed until now, we can only hope that scammers and other bad actors haven't either.
[Android Authority]
The company now offers up to $250,000 to people who find, detail, and demonstrate remote code execution vulnerabilities in Chrome. That more than doubles Chrome’s previous top payout, which sat at $100,115.
[Google Bug Hunters]
As reported by Bleeping Computer, Google is testing a new experimental flag that can hide sensitive content while “screen sharing, screen recording and similar actions” in regular tabs — redacting the user's entire screen if things like credit card details or passwords are detected.
There’s no mention of a release date, but it should be available for testing in Chrome Canary in the coming weeks.
A new option spotted in the Chrome 128 beta lets you search with Google Lens by clicking and dragging a box around the area of a website you want more information about. Google will then pull up search results based on the image or text you’ve highlighted — sort of like Circle to Search.
A new Canary test build of the Chrome browser (I see it in version 128.0.6611.0 in macOS) has a new performance alert to tell you when a tab is hogging resources, Windows Report spotted.
To try it, open the Canary Chrome browser, navigate to chrome://flags/#performance-intervention-ui, enable “performance intervention suggestions,” and restart. Now Chrome can complain about Chrome’s memory usage, too!
Apple and OpenAI make a deal
On The Vergecast: the inner workings of Apple Intelligence, Xbox handhelds, and the future of movie theaters.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web
The head of Google sat down with Decoder last week to talk about the biggest advancements in AI, the future of Google Search, and the fate of the web.
The search giant says it will phase out third-party cookies in its dominant Chrome browser in 2023, no 2024, erm... actually 2025, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing “ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers.” That assumes the effort to better protect user privacy gets approval from the UK’s CMA and ICO which are monitoring implementation.
Sometimes I need Chrome extensions to do my job. Sometimes I can’t do my job until whichever one’s misbehaving gets out of my face. So please let this be true.
Also, TIL there’s now a paid version of Chrome for enterprise with extra security?
[Android Authority]
Gecko (Firefox), Blink (Chrome / Edge), and WebKit (Safari) are the engines behind most web browsers, and the developers who make them have collaborated on a new benchmark to measure performance with browsing and web apps.
Announced in December 2022 and already used to optimize the browser engines listed above, Speedometer 3.0 is now available to test “key scenarios” like rendering a news site — if that’s the kind of thing you enjoy doing.
Correction March 11th, 4:29PM ET: An earlier version of this post incorrectly swapped the browser engines for Chrome and Firefox, it has been correct. We regret the error.