This is just kind of odd. Look at the picture below. See the picture of some guy in place of the “X” button? Yeah, that’s this guy.
Apparently, one of Google’s Chrome UI designers, Glen Murphy, has inserted his face into the latest nightly build of Chrome. Specifically, this is the Linux build, which is meant for developers and testers (we haven’t been able to see it on the Mac or Windows versions).
Our tipster was pretty surprised when he downloaded the nightly build and saw a person’s face staring back at him, so he asked around on the Chromium irc channel, and found out it was Murphy (who you can see in a picture here from SXSW three years ago).
Apparently, the next update will remove Murphy’s face. Oh those Googlers, always messing around.
[thanks Jimmy]
Breaking News.
Can Googlers do like this in any of their products? Are is it just with regard to this one? And how does Google allow this? What happened to the guy after this news? Any idea?
(Though his idea is cool, his face is not).
Chromium is an open source project, it’s not like this was shipping in the Google-branded “Chrome” builds. People put easter eggs in software all the time.
Based on any number of articles about Google’s corporate culture I doubt any negative action will be taken against him. Def funny though.
I haven’t this button, but I also upgraded today!
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Chrome has some excellent UI design, and this is kind of cute.
i like that the look of the browser is “just serious enough”, and would probably switch to it from safari on OS X based purely on its looks if all other things were equal.
but they are not equal, and Chrome seems to be the superior browser based on the features available and hinted at in the nightlies i’ve tested. that it looks good will make the decision to switch that much easier.
Pass that shit, stop bogarting.
I like it!
Kind of non-sense, huh?
…..
I have to admit I’m being overconfident, but with http://www.thessayist.com you too will be.Proof? http://bit.ly/ttqHj
What type of news is this?
Judging by the title there is only one person who can write such a post.
MG has really lost it.
This is the least newsworthy item I have seen on this site so far
I don’t really care how pointless this post was. No one is forcing you to read it, and it’s interesting at least. I’m just glad MG didn’t just write another laughably-biased-Apple-Fanboy writeup again. Keep it up, MG.
Mike, if your reading this, please create a new TechCrunch section called Odd Stuff and let Siegler be the editor and contributor. This post and the one about Chrome Themes are pointless and without merit.
Maybe to you it’s without merit, but some of us really enjoy these sorts of things mixed in.
That explains it! I was wondering why the UI seemed so ugly.
Oh…. because I use awesome windows manager I missed this gag… come on… you should put it on “close tab” instead…
LOL! It’s nice to see that every once and a while, someone decides to have a little bit of innocent fun. Kind of like an out in the open Easter Egg.
Is this newsworthy? Not necessarily. Is it fun? Absolutely!
And in other news…
…. Twitter’s logo birdie has got one more hair/bristle in one of its feathers.
Typical Techcrunch reporting.
funny sh*t
If you trace through the commit log you’ll find that one of the other developers did this as a way of pressuring Glen to produce a real graphic for the close button. Which he then did.
(I am a Chromium developer.)
I want to stab that guy in the eye with a rusty fork. When his smug face appeared the chromium GTK theme stopped selecting the correct background colour for me.
Thanks a lot Glen!
Based on any number of articles about Google’s corporate culture I doubt any negative action will be taken against him. Def funny though.
Geez Glen, I thought we saw the last of your ugly mug when we packed you off to Google. If only you would get off your lazy arse and finish projects this would not happen!!!!!
I love your Wordpress theme, is it a custom theme?