Portable edition now available
It's all well and good to say any beta browser has these flaws, but can anyone give me a good reason as to why Google kept the browser closed source until its initial beta release, other than creating media hysteria, which isn't a good reason to begin with? This is not to mention Google's misuse/abuse of the 'BETA' moniker since the GMail fiasco...
Insurance against the web and rival competitors although marketing is already a big enough reason to do this. See any browser besides Firefox who have small market share despite possibly appealing to certain users.
Think back on how Opera has one of the most stable betas in the past and it never get them much marketshare despite getting coverage everytime they release a "new" feature. Why? Because if it's not something an extension maker would copy to Firefox shortly thus killing the appeal, it's their poor marketing efforts in the first place.
Again, think back on how "well received" Safari was for Windows that mar it to this day even with updates.
I think the better question is, can anyone give you a definite bad reason for Google's decision to keep the browser under wraps.
I agree with your assessment on Gmail though. That's why I don't mind this one. This is probably the best beta entry Google has ever had and it's also one of the best entry for a browser that I've seen for quite some time.
Firefox already killed IE through extensions.
Maxthon and Opera already killed IE through security, out of the box features and customization.
Now the only thing left is to kill the beast on marketing and user interface. After that, I think we'll finally get Browser Wars 2 and it should be one hell of a ride.
-Paul Keith
Thank you for the portable version, I might keep it handy if only for testing purposes (provided it doesn't come with Google Updater.
Firstly, I can't imagine what features of chrome would be worth copying at all...and had it been open source from the beginning, by now they'd have 500 times as many features.
Opera failed because it is closed source, and their parent company is nothing on Google as far as marketing goes. Safari failed because Apple are incompetent.
Had Chrome been open source and public knowledge from the beginning, users would be safer as there would have been fewer initial users (though this is more the users' fault than Google's, though they are to blame for the way they portrayed the browser as feature and security complete despite the 'beta' tag). Users of chrome are also staring down the barrel of a featureless, insecure and ill-rendering browser that will sooner infect them with malware than provide them with good user experience, why?, because Google can't help themselves.
Ehtyar.
Recent Posts
