Google Chrome – Bookmark Sync…to Google Documents?!?!

By now most of you probably know that the latest dev channel build of Google Chrome (link) enables bookmark syncing – for me an absolute must-have feature that I’ve been dying to get my hands on…all you have to do is download from the dev channel or use the channel changer and then start chrome up with the --enable-sync command-line flag. It works pretty well (shortly after installing it on my home box i reimaged my pc and lo-and-behold, there were my bookmarks waiting for me when I installed Chrome).

However, one thing really does not sit right with me: bookmarks are synced with Google Documents and not Google Bookmarks…does this seem counter-intuitive to anyone else?…kind of like saving my bookmarks as flat files in the My Documents folder in Windows…The reason, I believe, is pretty straightforward, though you may correct me if I am mistaken. Google Documents uses XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) to essentially push messages in real time rather than having a client poll a server at a set interval – something which, I guess, Google Reader does or can not do. While the functionality works, and works well, it seems like a bit of a hack and to all of us building up a library of bookmarks in Google Bookmarks a less than ideal solution. I guess i’ll give Google the benefit of the doubt (this is a beta feature after all) and continue hoping that they come up with an official way to reconcile these disparate systems.

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