Google irks Korean users again over belated response to Chrome bug

A group of Google apps, including Chrome, is seen in this file photo. gettyimagesbank

By Park Jae-hyuk

Google faced criticism from Korea's internet users once again for not fixing an error in Chrome promptly, despite their continuous complaints over the past few days.

After the U.S. tech giant updated its web browser to version 100 last week to enhance security, Korean users complained about a problem when doing a search for Korean words through Chrome's address bar, in which it autocompleted their previous search words without erasing them automatically, even if users wanted to search different words.

The error did not occur when typing Roman letters into Chrome's address bar.

According to users, Microsoft Edge and Naver Whale showed the same problems, as the web browsers are also based on Google's Chromium open-source web browser project.

Some Korean users of Chrome said that they had tried to fix the error by deleting their web browser histories and turning off the autocomplete function.

However, their efforts did not work, aggravating the inconvenience.

Although some users reported the bug to Google Chrome Help Center last week, the company did not respond immediately.

"I returned Chrome to the previous version, due to the autocomplete function," one internet user wrote online.

This is not the first time Koreans have complained about Chrome when doing searches of Korean words.

In 2020, when users typed in Korean words on Google's search engine using Chrome, the web browser's autocomplete function caused the duplication of the first letter.

As a result, users had to erase the first letter manually, whenever they did a search for a Korean word.

Back then, there was also no problem when users typed in Roman letters.

"Those errors caused speculation that Google is indifferent to the Korean market," another user said.

Data compiled by a web traffic analysis website, StatCounter, showed that Chrome accounted for 52.75 percent of Korea's web browser market in January, followed by Apple Safari with 13.5 percent, Samsung Internet with 13.22 percent, Naver Whale with 9.43 percent, Microsoft Edge with 7.29 percent and Microsoft Internet Explorer with 1.23 percent.

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