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Google gives Chrome spit 'n' polish treatment, says report

Hold on to your hats, Google Chrome is coming out of beta. The internet giant’s vice president Marissa Mayer told Michael Arrington at LeWeb 08 that Google’s open source Windows-friendly browser, which debuted about three months ago, will be given the full release treatment soon. According to the interview, Google is responding …

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Simon Painter
Dead Vulture

Macs?

"Sadly, for all you fan boys and gals out there, a Mac version of Chrome remains missing in action."

That's blatant trolling. There is no sign of a linux version either AFAIK so that's a bit of a silly statement designed to raise the heckles of the Mactards.

Besides, who cares about a niche OS designed for media types?

Ned Fowden

not good enough

ok, i've used pretty much every browser there is, and while chrome is good it definitely does need some spit n polish.

for me though, i need simplicity in my browser, i don't use gadgets & widgets, i just need it to work perfectly, and the ONLY browser that has complied with all my needs is IE.

i NEVER have a problem with IE, having installed chrome i had multiple issues in the first week ... needless-to-say i removed it shortly after.

good luck Google, you've got a good browser, just not good enough

Marky W
Alert

Widgets/Add-ons/Extentions

I like chrome. It's quick to start, and the interface is nice and clean. I'd probably switch if I could take all my coveted FF extensions with me (I'm sure I'm not alone in this, or that I'll be the only person to comment on the fact). Bolt-on functionality for Chrome is 100% assured at some time.

HOWEVER, the big G will have to come up a new name for these pearls of goodness. "Cling-ons" perhaps? Or "G-spots"?

Any other suggestions...

Daniel

How can they pull it out of Beta so quickly?

I mean GMail is STILL in Beta and that's been going on for four and a half YEARS now.

David Kelly
Thumb Down

Google Native Client

From Google's description of Native Client:

"Imagine that you run a photo-sharing website and want to let your users touch up their photos without leaving your site. Today, you could provide this feature using a combination of JavaScript and server side processing. This approach, .. would probably be painfully slow for users who just want to make a few simple changes. With the ability to seamlessly run native code on the user's machine, you could instead perform the actual image processing on the desktop CPU, resulting in a much more responsive application by minimizing data transfer and latency."

Erm, this sounds like a web applet. Haven't Google heard of Java??

Vincent

Re: Macs

It came across as a tongue-in-cheek comment to me. I'm using a Mac, and I didn't really care about the "Mac fan boys and gals" comment. In fact, the whole Mac users reacting badly to that kind of thing is probably one of the reasons that Apple has such a bad name nowadays.

As for Chrome, I may give it another go when there are some add-ons for it. I like having Adblock Plus and Last.fm functionality in my web browser. I'll give the "full" version a go, if I like it more than Firefox then i'll keep it.

Oh, and wasn't there a Linux version in the works? Or am I just cracking up there?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Wait... what?

So to sum up this article:

"Google's Chrome browser is coming out of Beta at an undisclosed time"

...

John Macintyre

news just in

a random google app is suggested to be coming out of beta. No timeline as to when this will happen.

I appreciate that this is happening (personally I've never used it but people I know have and seem to think it's ok), but is it really news or is this just google trying to get in the papers again for chrome, since we haven't heard anything about it for a while now?

Man I must be bored :(

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

@Simon Painter

As of 13/11/08 Google claim to have had a working version of Chrome for Linux. No mention of one for OSX. I can see no particular reason for their lying about the Linux version, and to be fair you would expect them to be well advanced with the Linux version since they use a whole lot of Linux themselves.

So maybe the author just assumed that we all knew about the progress on the Linux version when making the statement about the lack of a Mac version.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

@David Kelly

"Haven't Google heard of Java??"

Yes they have and it won't do the job. Have you even read the text you quoted?

Christopher P. Martin
Flame

@Ned Fowden

I really hope you're a troll. The unfortunate times I'm forced to use IE, I tear my hair out because of its clunky, ugly slowness. Yeah, chrome is a bit lame, but you tell me something about Firefox that doesn't "just work"! And no, websites that refuse to comply with standards don't count.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

I rather like it..

The lack of, er, chrome means that it is very usable on an 8.9" Eee in normal mode. Not quite as quick as Opera, but it's got a lot going for it.

bigfoot780
Stop

Deployment

Do any of the companies that put out browsers think through the deployment. IE is number one due to a) being included with windows and b)group policy and ieak Mozilla ,Opera,Apple and google need to address this.

Pierre
Coat

MS FTW!

"for me though, i need simplicity in my browser, i don't use gadgets & widgets, i just need it to work perfectly, and the ONLY browser that has complied with all my needs is IE."

On a similar note, I don't use a lot of gadgets and just need my OS to be lightweight, to work perfectly, reliably, and to be 100% secure. To date, the ONLY OS that has complied with all my needs is Vista.

Anyway, I think this lil' browser war is getting old. Browsers are becoming increasingly bloated and burdensome. Also, with the old approach the settings are computer-specific, which can be annoying. The browser world is in dire need of the same revolution as the document processing world had with Google Docs. When will we finally have the browser-in-the cloud?

Neoc
Coat

Re: "Widgets/Add-ons/Extentions"

I assume the installation wizard will be called "G-Wiz"?

Vincent
Paris Hilton

Re: When will we finally have the browser-in-the cloud?

Is that even possible?

The web browser is a means of accessing applications in the cloud, how would you get hold of the web browser if you have no web browser to access it?

It would be like trying to download, say, Firefox on a clean installation of Windows without Internet Explorer.

Confused Face icon, please? Paris will do for now.

Barry Tabrah
Unhappy

Install location

The worst thing about Google Chrome is its installation location, which is in the application data folder of the currently logged in user. The Google team seem to think this is the correct location for Chrome as it's not an application. However on a multi-user system this can cause major headaches.

Microsoft created a Program Files folder for a reason. Sure, Google Chrome should be storing settings in the user folder but they shouldn't be storing applications there.

You have to question what other windows standards they are throwing to the wind.

Blasmeme
IT Angle

Re: When will we finally have the browser-in-the cloud?

'The web browser is a means of accessing applications in the cloud, how would you get hold of the web browser if you have no web browser to access it?'

Didn't we used to get browsers from magazine disks? Can't you still get browsers from magazine disks?

Pierre

Browser-in-the-cloud

"is that even possible?"

Yes. A web browser is not the only way to remotely connect to a server, you know. Then it's just a matter of feeding the remote data directly to your X server. But I was being ironic. The part on Vista should have been a clue. Actually, the current trend is toward dumping whole websites on the clients instead of serving only the requested page, so putting the browser in "the cloud" would be quite counter-productive.

Thad
Coat

Google Chrome?

Oh! That! I'd forgotten all about it.

As, I imagine, have lots of people...

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