Google desperately wants browser marketshare. My guess is that by taking it out of beta and announcing an official version 1.x as stable, they'll be able to finalize few distribution deals with PC OEMs. OEMs don't like shipping beta stuff (even though some stuff they ship is worse than most betas you'd try from MS or Google) so this will pacify them. In short, this is just a marketing move on their part... don't read much into tech side of things at all.
Exactly. I love chrome and can't wait for the plugins, scripts and Linux ports.
Minimalist: Check
Fast: Check
Secure: Check
Its a win for me, Firefox is great and I will always love it but I could never get a good theme for Firefox that would return my screen and I never liked the download manager, and the bloat.
I was fooled by good Chrome UI design myself, but after careful tweaking of Firefox with good theme and plugins I just can't use Chrome, I switched back to Firefox completely, it's so much better in every way...
I find chrome has a few problems, firstly it can start to perform very badly when many tabs are open - a bit buggy, and secondly it does not display as many pages correctly as firefox.
All in all I love the speed of chrome - but reliability of firefox is still a very big + for me.
a) Why would Chrome, a browser that doesn't come bundled with PCs, save PC users from IE when they already have Firefox as an unbundled IE alternative?
b) Chrome is not a competitor to IE or Firefox or Safari or any other traditional browser. It is a competitor to Windows and OS X and other operating systems that is being snuck in wearing a very unconvicing mask with a picture of a web browser on it.
To answer your a)... Because most users don't think about their browser and hence use whatever the default is. OEMs will likely never bundle Firefox, but there is a chance that they'll bundle Chrome since it has Google's name behind it.
Hence, Chrome rescues users (developers?) from IE.
As for your b)... I agree totally. Chrome is nothing but an application delivery platform for Google apps that is disguised as a browser. Which is all the more motivation for Google to pursue bundling deals with OEMs.
Why would Chrome save users from Windows when they already have Ubuntu as an unbundled Windows alternative?
If the Google name gets people who currently use IE to try out something else, that's a win for web developers.
Chrome is different than the other browsers in its slimmed-down interface, sure. But as other browsers, and the computers they run on, get faster and more compliant, the advantage that Chrome has over them as a client for web applications will erode. Apparently FFX 3.1 Beta 2 already has a faster js engine than Chrome's beta did.
Yes, it is. At first, I thought that maybe it's because Linux hackers weren't stepping up to help with the development efforts, but then I started wondering how many Windows hackers helped out with the Windows version.
How can it be out of beta when there is still no Mac or Linux version? Will those versions spend any time in a beta state?
If the Mac and Linux versions are initially released as beta, it seems odd to me to have one product in differing states of 'completeness' on different platforms.
However, I can't imagine that Google would give the Mac or Linux versions the gold star seal of approval right off the bat.
Does anyone know about the status of the non-Windows versions of Chrome? It'd really be nice to use it, but I use a MacBook Pro at work and Ubuntu on my dsktop at home.
Gmail is in beta, so Google gets less flak for outages, account lockouts, etc. "It's free and beta, so it's unsupported, take it or leave it". They have a strong position compared to other crappier webmail services.
For browsers it's reversed. Beta = "Can I really trust their browser to handle my online banking SSL connections properly?" It's the "go straight to version 2 to increase adoption" phenomenon.
Edit: Also, strategy. Gmail expands adsense footprint. Chrome is Google's attempt to compete with flash, silverlight, et al. for the future "web OS", following the rule that platforms always end up beating applications.
"We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done. We are working to add some common browser features such as form autofill and RSS support in the near future. We are also developing an extensions platform along with support for Mac and Linux."
Doesn't seem to have fixed the problem where your hard-drive keeps chugging along for as long as Chrome is open.. I hope they'll get to that soon, or at least, that it won't be a problem on the Mac version.
They have a bug that makes chrome unusable for me, and its still there. You simply cannot save a file from Chrome if a file of the same name already exists. It cannot overwrite. Geez.
I was a little confused about how it could be out of beta without any steps up to this, but apparently it auto-updates without asking or telling. Not complaining, but that's news to me.
It didn't do the auto-update thing for me. If it doesn't for you either you can go to "Tools" (the little spanner icon)--> "About"-->"Check for updates" and it'll install the latest version.
Memory usage is amazing in chrome. I've recently been comparing footprint on exactly the same tasks with my own web app. Chrome < 30mb, IE 7 fully patched XP > 160mb, FF ~80mb. I'm still using FF as my default but may be switching soon ;)
I'm jealous of the next generation of web developers who will (hopefully) work in a web environment with lots of competition and not so much of a browser monopoly!
