Danger: Mac and Linux builds available

Thursday, June 04, 2009

In order to get more feedback from developers, we have early developer channel versions of Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, but whatever you do, please DON’T DOWNLOAD THEM! Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won’t yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.

Meanwhile, we’ll get back to trying to get Google Chrome on these platforms stable enough for a beta release as soon as possible!

By Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg, Product Managers


Google Chrome is one of the newest browser platforms that has taken popularity. I think that the focus Google has taken on Chrome is interesting. Instead of trying to supply as many features as possible in their browser, they made their first focus Security, their second speed. The speed of the browser is why so many people like it. More and more people are looking into ways to make their computer programs faster without purchasing new hardware, or paying for new programs. Google Chrome has manged to attract users by keeping their original goals.
I decided to download and try Google Chrome a while ago, after their official release. I found that the browser was very simple, and relatively easy to use. It was very stripped down in the world of features, however this was done on purpose. Overall, I think this is a great program for users who are not very tech-savvy. More advanced computer users that tend to leave their Internet browsers open may want to stick to their current browser, rather than moving from browser to browser.
Google Chrome does not make your Internet faster, but Google Chrome will load much faster than your ordinary browser, and for pages that have large amounts of Javascript, and third-party elements (such as Java Platform, Adobe Flash…) the order and the threading used in loading elements is more efficient.
I expect to see other browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, and Opera follow some of the examples Google Chrome has set. Most browsers have been focusing so much on improving the ability to add more, it ends up bogging them down. It seems the new trend in browsing is minimization.

About Jesse Zylstra

Hey! My name is Jesse Zylstra, and I am the administrator of this website. I used to write about free software and programs, online web applications, and new technology -- especially open-source. Now I just write udder nonsense. I also play pipe organ, which I'm told is a fun and interesting fact about me. In the past, I studied network administration. Now I've been trying to pursue a real fake bachelors degree for the last, oh, 10 years or so.
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1 Response to

  1. Tinkering Tom says:

    This aged surprisingly well. Chrome is nearly an industry standard. Both Internet Explorer/Edge and FireFox have copied several details from the development of Chrome — and I think we’ve seen better stability across all browsers as a result.

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