Google and Google Chrome sound similar. After all, they both have Google in their names. But this doesn’t make them similar in any other way.
Google is the parent company that makes Google search engine, Google Chrome, Google Play, Google Maps, Gmail, and many more. Here, Google is the company name, and Chrome, Play, Maps, and Gmail are the products.
When you say Google Chrome, it means the Chrome browser developed by Google.
Let’s understand in detail
What’s Google?
Google is a company that was started in 1998. It was created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In its initial days, it was just a search engine. There were already a few search engines back in those days (such as Altavista). But Google turned out to be the simplest and easiest to use, which made the company popular really quickly.
Within the first year of launching the search engine, they started getting 3 million page views per day. In just two years after its creation in the year 2000, Google had already indexed a billion web pages. It had become the biggest search engine in the world!
Ever since then, Google has made more progress – indexing more pages, adding more languages, filtering out malicious websites, and adding better functionality to its services.
No search engine has matched the potential of Google ‘til now. There have been popular search engines from Microsoft and Yahoo but none of them are even close to Google. The reason behind this popularity is the ease of use, quality results, and also the fact that people don’t want to try anything new.
Some popular products by Google
There are several popular products from Google. Let’s discuss some of them.
YouTube: The popular video sharing service. You can upload your own videos or watch videos uploaded by others. There are millions and millions of videos on YouTube from cute cat videos to movies and a lot of other things.
Gmail: A popular email service. You can send and receive emails on Gmail. Gmail lets you send and receive emails from other email providers as well. It takes just about a few seconds to get started on Gmail.
Cloud: Google Cloud lets you store your documents and photos in the cloud so you can access them no matter where you are. Also, you can access these files from any device you’re signed into. Google offers a free trial on its cloud services.
Chrome: Just like so many other products, Chrome is also a Google product. It’s a browser that will let you access the Google search engine, Gmail, YouTube, and other services. When you use a phone, all these services come as separate apps. But when you’re on the computer, you’ll probably use them inside Chrome.
These are just a few of the services offered by Google. The tech giant offers several other services that people very fondly use.
While Google is still referred to as a search engine sometimes, the truth is that it’s much more than that. It offers many products as listed above. Since we’re discussing the difference between Google and Chrome, we’ll discuss Chrome and what it does.
What’s Google Chrome?
Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. Its first version was launched in 2008. Back in those days, Chrome could be used only on MS Windows. However, it can now be used on Linux, Mac, Android, and iOS as well. It’s the default inbuilt browser in Android.
It is among the most popular browsers in the world and there’s a popular joke that says the only time someone uses MS Edge (default browser of Windows), it’s to download Chrome.
While Chrome has several advantages, it eats up RAM pretty quickly. This can make your computer slow down. This is why several people have stopped using Chrome. Some other popular browsers are Firefox and Safari. However, as people are waking up to the need for privacy, they have started using private browsers such as Kingpin. With private browsers, your private data stays protected and it doesn’t land in the wrong hands.
Does Google provide all these services for free?
Well technically, since you’re not really paying for these services (except of course if you go for YouTube Premium or get any other premium services), you’re using all these “for free.” When you use Google products for free, they collect information about you.
This information is used to create a user map. The videos you watch on YouTube, the things you browse on Chrome, the events you store on Calendar, and other services – they all collect your data and give it to advertisers.
Safer alternatives
If you don’t want a company to read your information, you should switch from Google to other companies. For example, you can use Vimeo or Metacafe instead of YouTube. Dropbox instead of Google Cloud. And Kingpin instead of Chrome.
Kingpin is a secure browser that maintains your privacy. It doesn’t store any of your details. Chrome stores your history, usernames, and passwords. So if anyone gains access to your device, they can get to see your usernames and passwords on all websites you’ve logged into.
But with Kingpin, even if someone gains access to your device, they won’t get to see your browsing history or other details. Kingpin is available for Windows and Mac. It works with the ad block feature turned on so there won’t be able pesky ad companies following you everywhere with their ads.
When you open a new website, it will most probably ask you to accept their cookie policy. If you decline it, they won’t let you access their content. To counter this problem, Kingpin will accept cookies during that session but as soon as you close the window, it will delete all the cookies kept by the websites.
While it has Google as the default search engine, you can change it to Duck Duck Go (a more private search engine) in just a few clicks. It’s a browser with all the right features with added layers of security.
