The short answer to that question is: yes, seems to be!

Like everyone else, I downloaded Google’s new browser yesterday and set about playing. Thus far, I’m finding it a marked improvement over my previous browser, which was some iteration of Firefox 2. It’s speedy and doesn’t leak memory - and, most importantly, hasn’t crashed at all yet. Each tab in Chrome is a separate process, so if one tab goes down it won’t drag everything down with it, but I’ve not managed to cause a single “sad tab” yet. (Only a matter of time, I’m sure.)

While one day isn’t really enough to test drive a browser, I’ve stumbled across a few little touches that I’m really enjoying - like the way you can grab the corner of a text input box (e.g. the Wordpress box I’m typing into right now!) and resize it. So, instead of just being able to see a small section of this post, I can make the box big enough to display the whole thing. I don’t actually need to do that, but, um, well… I might? At some point?

I like the way you can drag separate tabs out into their own windows, too. And I like that all my bookmarks and settings have all been copied straight over. I like the idea of a home page that displays all your most-visited sites, so you can jump straight to them, and I am loving the intelligent address bar. The ability to browse “incognito”, so that Chrome doesn’t store the sites you visit in an incognito window in your history, is potentially quite useful, and I’m loving how clean and tidy and aesthetically pleasing the browser is. I’m sure I’ll run into some problems at some point, because nothing’s ever perfect, particularly in its first iteration, but so far, I’m a Chrome fan.

Not convinced? You can read about the joys of Chrome via the medium of webcomic here. Even if you don’t end up downloading the browser, the comic’s pretty…

I was all set to write a blog post this morning… and then, in the course of my catching up with the Internet, noticed that Mike Skuse had pretty much done it for me. Actually, I’ve written about something similar before too, but I’m going to add another post to the pile anyway. Last week, I took some time off work - and banned myself from my laptop as well. I set up away messages on Facebook, in my Gmail account and in my work e-mail account, letting people know that if they needed me, they could call my mobile but that I wouldn’t be checking any online messages at all. Then I powered down my laptop, closed the lid, and left it alone.

I did consider locking it in the back of my wardrobe or something, just to put the temptation well and truly away, but didn’t bother in the end. Which is probably why I ended up cheating a couple of times.

Monday felt really odd. Usually, getting up and eating breakfast sitting at my desk is part of my morning routine, but Internet access was banned, so instead of switching on the computer I switched on the TV and watched the news. I had planned to walk into town or do some exploring (shamefully, since I moved house in March I really haven’t explored enough of the local countryside) but the weather had other ideas, so I spent most of Monday curled up on my sofa reading a book with obnoxious pop music playing in the background and rain battering against the windows. Which isn’t all that far away from my idea of the perfect day, actually.

By Tuesday, I’d more or less acquired the knack of not sitting at a computer all day, and since the sun was shining I went out and explored. Wednesday was another rainy day, but I was better prepared this time and spent the day baking cupcakes, and on Thursday… well, I did some backsliding. My boyfriend called from Euston to say that all the trains were cancelled, and I wanted to find an alternate way for him to get home, which naturally meant hopping onto Google. I’m not proud - but how on Earth did people cope before there was Google, anyway?

While I was online, I took the opportunity to clear the 500-odd post backlog on my RSS reader, and to read/delete the 50 e-mails sitting in my inbox. I spent about an hour on the computer before forcibly prying myself away and moving into the kitchen to cook, and then settling down with a book again.

Friday and the weekend were mostly taken up with social engagements, but I did let myself back on the computer to reply to e-mails and to clear my RSS feed again (er, and to look up a recipe. Oops). I didn’t check my work e-mail addresses, though, so this morning has involved yet more ploughing through - it’s odd, because I generally deal with e-mail as and when I recieve it, to see a week’s worth of mail all piled up like that. I use the Internet for absolutely bloody everything, from planning travel arrangements to keeping in touch with friends to planning shopping trips and finding recipes and playing games and generally keeping myself entertained and up to date with the world, and I’m not entirely sure that I even accomplished much in my week away from the ‘net, apart from lots and lots of cooking and ploughing through three novels, but somehow, it felt good to cut the strings for a little while, to liberate myself from the constantly-in-touch world and just … relax.

Still, it’s 11:24 right now and time for a nice big coffee, I think. Lots to do, lots to do…

Two things have been dominating my brain for the last couple of weeks: moving house, and playing Portal.

Portal is… well, it’s a revelation. I know, I know; once again, I’m really really late to the party. Everyone else in the world knew that Portal was brilliant back in October, and there have been any number of Internet memes generated about it since then. If you haven’t played it yet, go now and do so. It’ll take you under 3 hours, if you’re good at gaming, or, if you’re me, more like five and a half hours, and those hours will be alternately intriguing, frustrating, creepy, and immensely satisfying.

Moving house, on the other hand, seems to take an absolute eternity, and is made of pure frustration.

The two things seem to have become inextricably linked in my brain, though, to the point where I’m having nightmares about moving vans and portals. I’m not sure why it was a nightmare - actually, I’d love to be able to shoot a blue portal into my new place, an orange one at the old place, and just chuck all my boxes through. It’d save a two hour drive each way, which would be fantastic. I’d love to be able to just step from one place to another through portals, without having to travel all the time (commuting on the Victoria line has been hellish lately, which is part of the reason for the move) though placing the portals could be tricky, and without Chell’s magic leg-protectors, I’d probably do myself an injury within a day or so.

Every time I get really into a game or web service or computer program or whatever, though, it just makes me realise how utterly inconvenient real life can be. Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Google to search reality? (I suspect that thought will keep occurring to me over the next couple of weeks, because things tend to go inexplicably missing when house-moves are happening.) Or, better, use Google to search your brain for all the passwords and PINs and other identifying data you used when you set up various accounts and have now utterly forgotten? Having to call or write letters to every company with whom I hold an account to get them to change my address or send a final bill or whatever other fiddly task has somehow become necessary is driving me insane; if only everything could be updated online, life would be great. I guess, basically, what I’m saying here is that I’m lazy, and I wish the real world could be as easy to sort out as the virtual one.

Remind me of this when, next week, I’m tearing my hair out over my complete inability to set up a wireless network in the new place.

How am I ever supposed to break my addiction to Google when they go and offer themed skins?

I’ve just jazzed up my already-packed personalised homepage. Even better, I can fool myself that it’s for a good cause, since the background isn’t entirely white any more, which must be better for the environment, somehow. Maybe?

I’m sure there are reasons why Google isn’t quite the best thing in the world, ever, but obviously I’m easily won over by pretty colours. And a changing environment that knows what time it is, wherever you are in the world.

I’ve recently become aware of an addiction. Well, it’s really more of a dependence; something I rely on, and can’t get through my day without. I’m using it constantly, in one form or another…

Yeah, I’m a Google addict.

My homepage is Google.com. My main e-mail account is a Gmail one, my website is hosted on Blogger, and I recently discovered the time-saving joys of Google Reader (with the accompanying Firefox extension, naturally). My Google homepage is customised to the hilt, with handy access to Wikipedia, a to-do list, weather forecast, and, um, Bejeweled and a Magic 8 ball, just because they were available.

I’ve tried telling myself it’s not that bad really; I only occasionally use Google Maps to find out where I’m going, and I haven’t succumbed to Google Earth. I don’t use Google Calendar, Google Documents or Froogle, but I do use various bits of Google’s search engine on a 100-times-daily basis, even when I should be using, say, Wikipedia, or a dictionary. (Other people use Google as a spellchecker sometimes too, right?)

I even use my Gmail account as a quick and dirty way of storing files online for later access via another computer — if I’m entirely honest, I’m typing this, right now, into an e-mail that I’ll save in my Drafts folder.

It’s probably a bit dangerous to be this reliant on any one company — but it’s Google, so it’s not a problem, right? This is, after all, the company whose motto is ‘don’t be evil.’ Okay, so there was quite a fuss when Gmail came out and people got scared of their targeted ’sponsored links’, which picked up on keywords in your e-mails to figure out what to try to sell you (right now, it’s offering me free satellite, 1GB free storage space, and a strategy for using Google adwords) but we all got used to that and stopped being freaked out. Targeted ads are just good sense, surely? And surely all that stuff about how Google censors the Internet in accordance with various countries’ policies, well, that must be okay, probably. As for the numerous lawsuits (over YouTube, particularly, or over Google’s plans to make thousands of books and newspapers freely available and searchable over the Internet), well, people sue over anything these days, don’t they?

I’m not convinced that using Google so extensively is a problem (I can quit whenever I want! I just… don’t want to) or at least not inherently, though maybe I should branch out a bit. Just in case, like.

I don’t know. Is anyone else as much of a Google addict as me? Or are your online activities sensibly spread out over various different companies? Everything seems to be becoming more and more integrated these days (see: Flickr forcing even its early adopters to get Yahoo accounts to sign in with) and there’s always something just a tiny bit scary about monopolies.