I want a tool that cleans up my bookmarks. I'll often bookmark a page to look at it later, but then never get back to it or forget I bookmarked it. After a few years of using Chrome, I've got a crapload of bookmark bloat. Here's what I'm looking for in such a tool (I might try to build this unless there's something out there already that does this):. Surface bookmarks I haven't visited in the past N days/months, give me the option to delete them. Identify groups of bookmarks that are similar (share most of the URL path or one page links to the other) or duplicates. Suggest folders to place the bookmarks in based upon what Google knows about the websites (Sports-related, WebDev-related, etc), and/or time (I bookmarked five pages about similar topics on the same day, it's probably part of research I was doing for something).
Deletes typed URLs, Cache, Cookies, your Download and Browsing History.instantly, with just 1-click on Click&Clean button!
Remove dead links or offer to convert them to the Google-cached version. Heh, when I read it, I took it to mean they are looking for malware exe's that are lodged on your system that affect Chrome. I guess you could go either way on it, but how is this different than just doing the 'Reset All Settings' function available in the Chrome settings? Text: 'This application will scan and remove software that may cause problems with Chrome, such as crashes, unusual startup pages or toolbars, unexpected ads you can't get rid of, or otherwise changing your browsing experience.' Fun fact, third party apps can't modify Chrome on Windows. AVG managed to.
1 When a user installs AVG AntiVirus, a Chrome extension called 'AVG Web TuneUp' with extension id chfdnecihphmhljaaejmgoiahnihplgn is force-installed. I can see from the webstore statistics it has nearly 9 million active Chrome users. This extension adds numerous JavaScript API's to chrome, apparently so that they can hijack search settings and the new tab page. The installation process is quite complicated so that they can bypass the chrome malware checks, which specifically tries to stop abuse of the extension API.
Chrome provides hooks to allow Windows to force extensions into it through Group Policy et al. Good for corporate IT, bad for protecting yourself against malware. The key insight is that Chrome itself is programmed to have quite-limited permissions—it not only heavily sandboxes itself, but it also does what it can to avoid requesting any powers from the OS that could be used to do damage in the first place, if one were to break out of the sandbox. (This also has the side-benefit that Chrome doesn't need any of those 'scary' UAC elevation prompts during installation, which probably helps their funnel to an extent.) This means that Chrome actually doesn't have any of the permissions required to weed out the GPOs responsible for feeding it malware extensions. Even if the Chrome process wanted to reach out and blow them away, it couldn't. So they created this separate program, that does do 'scary' UAC-elevation things, to help out. (What they could have done is package this program into the Windows Chrome install, make it headless, and make a button in the Chrome settings that would spawn it and then interact with it over IPC, displaying the UI on the Chrome side.
They could have, further, made it just-in-time download the component—as, IIRC, Firefox does with its Hello component—which would have eliminated any install-time size overhead to this approach.). Yes well Microsoft allowed that fraud to be perpetuated on the user and has done so for a very long time. It's actively detrimental to the user experience, and for the most part, they know it. But due to commoditization their manufacturers are dependent on it.
They aren't though, any PC you buy in a Microsoft store comes bloat free. No one stops you from installing clean Windows OS without bloatware. Ah sure, that's every average PC user's first step after unboxing their shiny new laptop. Wipe it with DBAN and do a fresh install. Just kidding, it's pretty obviously not. Most people don't even know what wiping a computer entails, or how to do it, or that it would actually get rid of the bloat.
These things seem simple to us but most people don't understand the first thing about computers. No one stops you from buying a Mac because you're sick of dealing with bloatware either. Can you tell me one single product in Apple which is sold by other than Apple. No clue what you're trying to say there.