
The Google Chrome download link is live. - ptm
http://www.google.com/chrome
======
halo
A few miscellanea you may have missed:

* JavaScript is lightning fast. 3x faster than FireFox 3 on the Dromaeo test suite.

* JavaScript compatibility isn't 100%. Fails in RaphaelJS, apparently Facebook and probably more. I'm unsure why.

* The download bar is interesting and different. Opens a bar at the bottom, defaults to Downloads in My Documents. Can drag elsewhere when done.

* It includes sleek a Firebug-esque tag inspector. Right click and inspect element.

* Scrolling up doesn't work on my trackpad. Middle clicking and scrolling up/down doesn't work. I hope this is fixed soon

* The drop-down search bar is neat. Press Ctrl+F to open it. It doesn't work in textareas.

* You can hide the bookmarks bar via Ctrl+B.

* You can drag tabs in and out of the window to form new windows. There's also a lovely animation when you move tabs around.

* There's a task manager for Chrome alone - right click on the main bar and click task manager. 'Stats for nerds' for more info which takes you to about:memory - also shows you memory usage for IE and Opera.

* You can add keywords in the search bar by going to Options, Manage and changing the default keyword.

* Passes Acid2 test. On Acid3, gets a respectable 78/100 on the JS tests, but has a few rendering bugs and linktest failed. Both tests are currently getting hammered - I'm not sure whether this changes the result for the latter.

* You can resize textareas using the bottom-right hand corner

* It includes a spell checker. You can't seem to add new words to it though.

* It supports other search engines other than Google out of the box. It asked me what default to use on startup. It imported my info from FireFox.

* On clicking a link it only changes the status bar to indicate you've done so - other browsers make it more obvious.

* Source is available at <http://dev.chromium.org/> \- seems to be largely BSD licensed. I haven't downloaded it as it's almost 500mb.

~~~
Angostura
The Tag inspector is a Webkit feature, as are the resizeable text input boxes.
Webkit has been getting 100% on Acid3 for a few months now, so I'm not sure
why your Chrome install isn't.

~~~
halo
Fair enough, but Chrome does inherit them - I haven't used a Webkit browser
very much before because FireFox, in my experience, has been a much superior
experience on both GNOME and Windows than their Webkit alternatives.

------
run4yourlives
Holy shit this browser is fast.

Wow.

~~~
marketer
Not only does it feel much faster than Firefox/IE, but everything is much
simpler. They stripped away all the unnecessary toolbars and menus, and the
configuration options are much simpler.

~~~
Angostura
Thats how these things always start.

... and then people start requesting 'just a couple' of new features.

~~~
rudyfink
It'll be interesting to see how plug-ins play out. Google probably does not
need to provide the most feature filled browser as a core offering. Providing
a simple and highly robust browser is probably more ideal. Do less but be
indispensable at what you do.

I see this as a move that forces standards. Google is putting its big shoulder
behind increased performance and consistency on the internet. If other people
want to wrap the core offering in fancier clothes, I think Google still wins.

~~~
AndyKelley
Although this is true and good, I really really really want AdBlock.

~~~
boredguy8
And gestures and google toolbar!

------
azharcs
*Google Chrome for Linux is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible.

It does not work on Linux. :(

~~~
jsn
the source and build instructions for linux are available. checking it out
now, but it will probably take a while on my laptop.

edit: [http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-
instruction...](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/build-instructions-
linux)

~~~
tuukkah
_Note: If you want to use a Chromium-based browser, you should look elsewhere.
Although many Chromium modules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass,
nothing actually runs._

~~~
jsn
oops. right. shame on me.

------
jordyhoyt
Haha, incognito mode.

> For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan
> surprises like gifts or birthdays,

Riiiiight

~~~
henning
Think it's worth it to open up the executable in a hex editor looking for
strings along the lines of "pr0n mode"?

~~~
cstejerean
No need to open up the executable, the source is available, it should be
trivial to grep it.

------
bmj
Pretty swell, but I won't ditch Firefox just yet...I can't do without Firebug,
so I'll have at least one FF window, at least during working hours.

(This comment posted via Chrome)

~~~
mjr578
It has a javascript debug/console window that is pretty neat. It has auto
completion as well. Go to the page menu item, then the developer menu item.

------
spon
Check out the "Google Chrome Terms of Service": anything you post or transmit
with Chrome can be used by Google in any way it wants, for all time. They can
display your writings in public, modify it, or both.

This applies to everything you transmit using Chrome, no matter how private it
may seem, no matter if it's encrypted, no matter if you're sending it to
friends, family, lovers, business partners, employers, financial services
planners...

What was that slogan? "Don't be evil"?

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content
which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting,
posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable,
worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt,
modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute
any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute
and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in
the Additional Terms of those Services.

"11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such
Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom
Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use
such Content in connection with the provision of those services."

~~~
sfk
It is strange that up to now there have been virtually no comments about
privacy issues in this thread. It is clear to me that for a company in the
advertising business the prime reason to release a browser is to improve data
mining.

If, say, an association of insurers generously releases a "free" browser,
would people install it?

~~~
spon
From what I can tell, there's a way around this nonsense: use Chromium instead
of chrome. It's licensed under the BSD license.

<http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html>

On the other hand, two-dozen third party software packages are distributed
with Chromium, and all are released under some license.

------
brandnewlow
How hard would it be for FF add-ons to be ported onto Chrome? Is Google going
to offer add-ons?

~~~
arebop
I was disappointed that it doesn't seem to offer support for user scripting a
la greasemonkey. It seems like add-ons might be intentionally discouraged:

'The problem with revamping existing browsers to accommodate this concept is
that they have developed an ecology of add-on extensions (toolbars, RSS
readers, etc.) that would be hopelessly disrupted by a radical upgrade. "As a
Firefox developer, you love to innovate, but you're always worried that it
means in the next version all the extensions will be broken," Fisher says.'

\--- <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-10/mf_chrome>

~~~
ashu
That does /not/ say that add-ons are discouraged, merely that they chose to
make a browser on their own _because_ current add-ons (and backward
compatibility) would restrict their power if they had chosen to revamp current
browsers.

------
andreyf
Some JS tests:

<http://www.celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed2007.php>
<http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/speed_test/index4.html>

Needless to say, it's fast...

~~~
technoguyrob
Notice Chrome is slower in the first test because of the AJAX declarations.
But honestly, who is going to be worried about the speed of AJAX declarations?
Look at this comparison:

Chrome: Array object 131 Date object 30 Error handling 7 Math object 13 RegEx
object 52 String object 41 DOM 51 Ajax declarations 295 Total Duration 620

Opera: Array object 172 Date object 47 Error handling 31 Math object 47 RegEx
object 109 String object 63 DOM 31 Ajax declarations 62 Total Duration 562

If we assume Google can get AJAX declaration down to 62ms just like Opera
(which seems perfectly reasonable, I don't imagine they had those in mind when
considering speed), ten that would bring Chrome's execution time down to:

387ms!!

Assuming it can get a few more milliseconds down (it is after all only in beta
stage, now that it's been open-sourced I can imagine a good couple of
improvements will stream in), that means it's 1.5x faster than Opera! (which
is hailed as the absolute king of Javascript execution)

Also, Opera does some kind of caching thing I think. On some of the tests
(like Array and DOM), Opera consistently scored eiter X or 2X (e.g., 90, or
180). There is no way there could be a 2x speed difference just out of thin
air like that, so I imagine it's some trick that notices when it can be sped
up. If Chrome did that it could have the speed gain as well.

------
maxklein
Who want's to bet this browser will catch up to and get more popular than
firefox? It's sleeker, looks smaller, yet does the same stuff.

~~~
bmj
The one thing it doesn't have at this point?

Extensions.

I'm guessing there are plenty of people who will dig the browser, but without
the bells and whistles provided by extensions, many users won't switch.

I can live without AdBlock/FlashBlock, since I don't frequent many sites that
have heavy third-party content, but as I said above, I can't live without
Firebug right now.

~~~
vnorby
The first thing I thought when I saw Chrome was that they want to
stop/override programs like AdBlock for their search ads.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
If that's the case, I go to filtering proxies at my end.

~~~
rms
Oh yeah! I forgot about those. Now I can use Opera. Well, I could if I used
Windows. Any auto-updating filtering proxies for Linux?

<http://www.proxomitron.info/> was the old standby

------
plusbryan
The "create application shortcut" on desktop thing is truly revolutionary and
could change the way people view web apps.

~~~
jng
I agree. All the other elements are more "checkbox list" items, but this
really adds to the daily use experience.

------
r7000
There is a download link right on the Google homepage now.

<http://www.google.com/>

~~~
tbeseda
Direct download: <http://dl.google.com/update2/installers/ChromeSetup.exe>
Wine bottle it.

------
oneplusone2
Worst implementation of bookmarks yet. I have over 5k of them and managing
them in Chrome will be a futile process. Clicking the "Open all Bookmarks in
New window" button also crashes the browser when you have that many.

It is nice and fast though.

~~~
jhickner
In my opinion the bookmark implementation is the BEST yet. You essentially can
have multiple bookmark menus for different topics, as any folder you drag onto
your bookmark bar becomes a pulldown menu.

~~~
netcan
I think this falls in to the 'best for what?' category. Bookmarks are
something that gets used differently by different people.

Some freaks (no offence) with thousands of bookmarks have radically different
needs to others.

------
twism
I think Google might have Mozilla beat on intuitiveness of the UI.

~~~
stcredzero
The UI design is a step above! Bravo to Google! This is another way that this
browser will contribute by stepping up the competition a notch.

Another example: When the browser window is maximized with multiple tabs,
there is no space wasted on the title bar!

------
sdurkin
No Mac version. :(

~~~
bprater
Have any of you Mac folks tried it virtualized to see how it feels?

~~~
axod
Running it here... very snappy, the only shame is having to look at Windows XP
fonts which are _really_ ugly.

Roll on the mac version.

~~~
abstractwater
Can you guys run it through <http://dromaeo.com/> ? Curious to see how it
performs virtualized on a Mac.

~~~
DougBTX
Running in an XP Guest on OS X 10.4 with VirualBox on a 1.83 GHz Core Duo
MacBook gives 283.00ms (Total).

On the same system, running in Safari 3.1 in OS X gives 2749.00ms (Total).

------
greyman
Coool. Do you know if it is possible for Chrome to remember the font
magnification for visited websites? In FF, I usually enlarge website font, and
FF remembers my choice. Chrome doesn't do this automatically.

------
micah63
I need adblocker plus!!

~~~
volida
that's the only feature i am sure you will never see on this browser

~~~
johns
There will be an extension API. I'm doubtful they'll blacklist extensions. I
also doubt Google is worried about the extremely small minority of power users
that are blocking ads. So you'll never see ad blocking built in, but I'd bet
there will be an extension for it.

------
smanek
Wow. It comes with a javascript/dom debugger ... it seems roughly on par with
firebug.

And the task manager is amazing, exactly what I've been wanting.

(all the good stuff is under the Page menu, then the developer submenu. Took
me a while to find).

~~~
nswanberg
The "stats for nerds" page is also good entertainment (available from the task
manager or by typing about:memory).

Not only will it tell you where all that memory is being used (Chrome isn't
exactly lightweight), but it will also spy on IE and Firefox and let you know
how much memory they are using.

------
j2d2
It doesn't appear to support proxies during the install process.

~~~
RossDM
Yeah, this is a major bummer. How are we corporate-folk supposed to test?
C'mon, Google, give us a regular installer like the rest of the world.

~~~
RossDM
This has now been fixed. Thanks, Googlers.

~~~
ptm
What do you mean ?

Are you using the standard Windows installer or the buildbot waterfall ?

------
gaborcselle
I love that you can drag browser tabs from one window to the other. That's
just crazy cool.

~~~
trezor
So can Firefox.

~~~
Prrometheus
Can't pull a tab out of firefox to start a new window, though. That's
something I tried to do a few times because it seemed like something you
should be able to do.

------
gcv
Any idea why it installs itself in "C:\Documents and Settings\User Account
Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"?

~~~
kilowatt
Vista needs you to elevate permissions to install to Program Files.

This is from one of the devs in an "off-the-record" QA session here:
[http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=17826898#itemanchor_1782...](http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=17826898#itemanchor_17826898)

------
diptanu
Guys its rock solid and AWESOME. I just love it. Rock and roll time. I am
running john resigs dromaeo on it. Lets hope for the best. Cheers!

~~~
diptanu
Dromaeo results <http://dromaeo.com/?id=20571> Check it out. A lot faster than
FF and Safari. I am not counting IE here...IE is outdated with the launch of
Chrome.

~~~
plusbryan
ff: 1403.60ms

chrome: 393.20ms

leaving a browser that already felt fast in the dust: priceless

------
KrisJordan
Looks like they're making an offensive move towards Silverlight. The
Silverlight plug-in loads but the way in which Silverlight loads content from
the web looks like it is broken. Anyone else get past the "Loading showcase"
label here: <http://silverlight.net/showcase/>

~~~
neilc
Or else they just didn't make supporting Silverlight a priority of the initial
release.

------
paulgb
I wondered how it would handle an infinite loop of javascript alerts, so I
wrote a little script to test it:

<http://www.paulbutler.org/projects/chrome/test.html>

It passed! I'd be curious to know how Opera and Safari do on the test. I have
a hunch Opera might pass it.

~~~
stcredzero
If you want to test the GC in Javascript, try out an infinite loop of
unreferenced allocations. Generational GC should be able to handle this
without breaking a sweat.

~~~
paulgb
Actually, I wasn't trying to test the javascript VM at all, just how the
browser handled an infinite loop of alert dialogs. Since alert windows steal
focus, an infinite loop of them will keep stealing focus. I wanted to know how
Chrome would handle this.

~~~
stcredzero
I didn't think you were barking up the wrong tree. It's another suggestion.
You might need some kind of "yield" statement if you want to see how another
Javascript program will act with a background window spamming it with
allocations.

------
cconstantine
I'm really diggin' this browser. My favorite feature has to be the 'Incognito
Window'.

------
SarahToton
The browser is amazingly fast, clean, well-designed (great Omnibox) but the
comic-book-style explanation... really? That little digitomb took away
whatever load-time I would have saved the rest of the week.

------
Breath
The interface is very sleek.Speed is awesome. But font rendering is really
bad.And where is the Tools,View menus? Wont be my primary browser for XP.

~~~
stcredzero
Fonts definitely need some attention from a graphics person. My company's
intranet time reporting app looks like it was re-rendered by a techie -- the
fonts are small and seem to be designed as bitmaps with no eye to anti-
aliasing. It's much more functional, but it looks like crap.

------
plusbryan
I never thought I'd say "hurray" to yet-another-web-browser, but Google hit it
out of the park with this one. Hurray!

------
asmosoinio
Does not work at all on my computer (Vista). It starts up OK, but I get a
window saying "The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135).
Click OK to terminate the application." whenever I try to load anything.

<http://screencast.com/t/pY0dgFVCLr8>

~~~
asmosoinio
...but now it just works after a restart. Googling around seems to suggest
that was a .NET related problem.

------
sjh
Is it just me, or does spawning a new process per tab - which makes perfect
sense when the tab contains an actual web-app - seem like overkill if it's
only to read a document?

That said, if Chrome provided some equivalent of Live Bookmarks, I'd reconcile
myself to the profligate process spwaning.

------
ibsulon
Some small pieces...

1\. The plugin interface to adobe doesn't seem like it's quite there just yet.
I had some significant slowdowns with trying to get to other tabs and with
responsiveness.

2\. There were a few cases where new tabs didn't seem to load in the
background... has anyone else encoutnered this?

------
froo
One thing I'd like to see is to be able to embed some of the Google Gadgets
from iGoogle into the new tab screen, down the bottom would be nice.

Would useful to be able to keep up with email/rss/news incrementally while I'm
doing normal browsing, rather than having to go look for it.

------
nickb
Anyone know which icon is Chrome using when it makes app shortcuts? For my
site it used favicon but it definitely used a bigger icon. I've looked at
Gmail's favicon.ico file but it's not a multirez one.. it's just a plain
little 16x16 icon...

------
schtog
* Very clean.

* Speed I didn't notice any difference yet.

* I miss the Firefox upper right corner search bar.

* Not crashing the whole browser when one tab crashes is obviously very good(why hasn't this been solved before? has been a problem for so long and a very obvious one too)

------
partoa
Nice. The simplicity is OK, I never use the menu bar anyway. Still, I love my
FireBug, the EULA sucks and there's no noticeable speed difference with
Firefox on my machine, honestly. Back to Firefox.

------
partoa
Nice. The simplicity is OK, I never use the menu bar anyway. Still, I love my
FireBug, the EULA sucks and there's noticeable difference with Firefox on my
machine, honestly. Back to Firefox.

------
yan
I wonder how they will expose functionality to extension developers and if
that will even be possible.

I didn't stick to Opera nor Safari after Firefox due to lack of support for
some plugins I use and wrote.

------
unalone
This is pretty close to extraordinary. This thing is pitch-perfect. It's like
the best parts of Firefox and Safari and Opera merged. I can't wait for this
to come out for the Mac, now.

------
kmt
Hm, Chrome doesn't seem to fill the _charset_ hidden input. Interesting,
whether it's just that the feature is not yet implemented, or they don't
consider it to be useful/good.

------
ericwaller
The combined search/address bar is great -- the best ideas are often so
obvious in hindsight (likewise for gmail's email organization)

EDIT: and the "new tab" button is in exactly the right spot

------
bd
I really liked it until I got blue screen of death. And of all sites it was
one of the official Google blogs.

I couldn't reproduce the crash, but now, there is this lingering feeling ...

------
mhb
Fast, clean interface but no way to send a link, no highlighting of search
terms, redundant delete icon on every tab instead of one on the side for the
tab in focus.

------
jmatt
Interesting information can be found at the about: page.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML,
like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13

------
jmatt
I'd like the ability to tag bookmarked pages. Right now the bookmark tool is
too limited to be useful. I'll continue to have to use del.icio.us

------
baha_man
Looks like it doesn't run in Wine, guess I won't get to try it out until I go
back to work tomorrow.

------
pogos
try this: ctrl-f, enter something (say, firebug) and then take a look at the
scrollbar. Nice.

------
ashu
please, allow extensibility in this, like firefox, and I am ready to say
goodbye to Firefox!

------
simplegeek
Boy, does it rock :)

I'm writing this from Chrome and I must say it's clean, fast and pretty darn
cool :)

------
jmtame
Can I haz Firebug in Chrome plz?

~~~
johns
Webkit's Web Inspector is there, which I know is not Firebug, but I mention it
in case you didn't see it.

~~~
wenbert
does Webkit's Web Inspector allow you to view dynamically create DOM elements
like Firebug's Inspect tool?

------
rokhayakebe
OMG. The speed.

------
volida
about:memory

------
trezor
Copy-paste of my reddit response.

Not saying it's all bad, and I realize this is a first release, but if Google
wants to avoid the "MS Vista" stamp when it comes to software-making they
might consider fixing up the following points:

1\. Downloading the "installer" doesn't download the complete software.

2\. Installer presents everything in Norwegian, with no choice of English. I
want my software in English, end of story. There is no way to select English,
so for now I assume this is based on some Windows locale-settings which I will
just configure properly after install.

3\. Configuration hangs to the point of me almost killing the process. After
eating a few minutes worth of 100% CPU time, Chrome launches. No feedback is
given during this period that it is actually working on anything at all.

4\. Once running, Chrome is still in Norwegian mode.

5\. Options (or "Alternativer") shows no way to select a English UI language.

6\. The language-pack seems to include a spell-checking. This entire text-box
is filled with red lines. Because this is not written in Norwegian.

7\. Scrolling trough this small text-box proceeds to scroll down the entire
page when I reach the end. With what seems like 200 lines of scrolling per
millimeter on my laptop touchpad, this renders the scrolling area basically
useless for edits. This also applies to page-down in textboxes. Very, very,
very annoying.

8\. Scrolling in general scrolling seems way too fast also. Like 2-3 pages on
what should be 1.

Out of the box this is _not_ something I am happy with, and this needs to be
improved about 100 times from second 1.

A few simple choices (like language) must be added. Better reporting to the
user that something is actually being worked on needs to be present.
Configurability is shit. It has a _task manager_ for web-page tabs (i.e. "geek
stuff"), but wont let you configure basic stuff like if opening links in new
tabs should activate them or not.

I'm going to have to _uninstall_ this now and try to get hold of a English
version.

Edit: The language thingie evidently can be fixed without reinstalling. I just
couldn't find it with the non computing-standard language used in the options
dialog.

Edit 2: Now I find that google search always presents me the _Norwegian_
version, not the english, when searching from the url-bar. Despite having "I
want google in english" cookies firmly set.

This is bloody annoying. Stop forcing localization on me damnit!

~~~
jhickner
None of the issues you mentioned happened to me.

