Report: Google Chrome 'coming out of beta'

Google's Chrome Web browser is coming out of beta testing, according to a TechCrunch report Wednesday.

Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of user experience, told TechCrunch's Mike Arrington as much in an interview at Le Web 08, according to the report. However, there was no word about when the move might take place.

One possibility would be to announce it Thursday at Add-on-Con, a conference about browser extensions at which Nick Baum, a product manager on Google Chrome, is scheduled to speak on a panel about the future of Web browsers. Also on the panel are Joshua Allen, senior technical evangelist for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Mike Shaver, vice president of engineering for Firefox builder Mozilla.

Taking the browser out of beta would doubtless fulfill Google's ambition to let business partners, such as computer makers, bundle Chrome on their systems. Google launched the first beta version in September.

However, Chrome is still rough around the edges to be a version 1.0 product. New Chrome developer releases arrive frequently to stamp out bugs. Hotmail only works with Chrome if users launch it with a particular command-line option to fool Microsoft's e-mail site into thinking it's not using Chrome. And at least for me, even Google's own Google's Zeitgeist 2008 Web site doesn't work properly in Chrome: the country-specific pop-ups are cut off at the bottom of the browser view. (The same pop-up issue arises in Internet Explorer and Safari, but not in Firefox.)

Also, although Chrome has been in development internally at Google for years, it's curious that the company would take Chrome out of beta when it's resisted the impulse to do the same with Gmail and several other high-profile projects.

Chrome works only on Windows for now, though Google is working on a Mac version and a Linux version.

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Separately, Arrington reported that Mayer said Google plans to include an option in the first quarter of 2009 to turn off the new SearchWiki feature, which lets people customize their own search results.

[lmasanti]

quote:
"Also, although Chrome has been in development internally at Google for years, it's curious that the company would take Chrome out of beta when it's resisted the impulse to do the same with Gmail and several other high-profile projects."

IMO, Gmail is "essencially" a server-side program, although you maybe talking about the "client" web-based part.
OTOH, Chrome is a client-side app. And running only in Windows for now. Gmail "must" work in any browser... that's not hard... except for compatibility with IE.

[Shankland]

Gmail is a Web service that uses a lot of JavaScript that runs within various browsers. It's not the same thing as browsers running on various operating systems, but either way both require a bunch of programming, testing, and support. Windows is one marketing term, but supporting the various releases, service packs, and endless combinations of related software is still complicated.

[MSSlayer]

Who really cares?

1. Google software is nothing but spyware

2. The term beta no longer has any real meaning. The idiotic marketers have co-opted it and removed all value from the term.

[myles taylor]

1) Most software is spyware and that's how it makes money. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be free.

[geolemon]

Chrome STILL doesn't work with Win XP x64.

Instant crash of ALL windows, just from opening the options menu.
Bugs of that magnitude NEED to be fixed before releasing out of a Beta state!

[realneil]

It works fine on both of my 64bit XP boxes.
It works on the vista 64bit boxes too.

[Mr. Dee]

I guess you answered your own question Stephen. They don't even have a Mac version ready. What makes it even more weird is, for a Company that thrives on Open Source marketing, I would have at least expected them to have a Linux version somewhere in the wings waiting, at least in Alpha, since they love that kinda thing. With Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.1 betas full steam ahead, I think Chrome will be nothing but a rear view mirror after thought going into 2009. I can see a post from Stephen six months from now 'Chrome Development is Deafening Silence'.

[sting7k]

Yawn, has a long way to go before I ever consider moving from firefox. Why is everyone so down on FF3 all of a sudden just because Google released their own browser. Google isn't Jesus last time I checked.

[realneil]

FireFox 3 was a bust on my Mac. I had nothing but problems with it, so I went back to version 2 and stayed there.
FireFox put IE in it's place and rescued anyone who had the foresight to install it. It brought back hassle freeinternet browsing to the masses. IE is like being slowly pecked to death by Chickens,.....

[irondog1970]

Being the social networking creature that I am, I love the Flock browser on my Mac at home. At work, I'm 100% Firefox 3 on XP, which I love. The only thing Chrome seems to do that I wish Firefox/Flock would pick up on: detachable tabs. I never thought of it before Chrome, but now that I know the feature can exist--there are times when I wish I could detach a tab from the tab row to create its own window.

But along with many other comments: Google uses "beta" so often on so many products that the term is devoid of meaning.

[Shankland]

Actually, given their very conservative behavior about removing the beta label, I'm surprised they're going out of beta this early.

[yogadad]

I agree - as announcements go, this is a big yawn. I spent several hours with Chrome & gave it a good look-see but when I kept thinking "Why can't Chrome do XX? Firefox can", I went running back to FF and haven't looked back. Chrome has a long way to go before it measures up.

[Shankland]

What were the most glaring omissions?

[john55440]

As you alluded to, Google wants to pretend that Chrome is "nonbeta", so they can get OEMs to preinstall it. The browser has lost all marketing momentum, and Google wants to try to rescue it, before it becomes completely irrelevant.

[xylyx3d]

been using chrome from day one. I?ve had some minor issues but they lasted not more than a day at most, usually hours. This pales in comparison with firefox which out of beta I swear never worked right on any of my machines and is slow as a bastard. And IE might as well not exist for how poorly it operates, if you can call it operation.

Chrome has so far been THE most reliable browser I have used, and it loads quickly and browses quickly and everything always works. (don?t nag me about minor issues I mentioned before, fire fox had issues that took months to resolve, and some of them not so minor, like memory leaks for one?did they ever resolve that?)

Fire fox and IE can bite the dust as far as I?m concerned =)

No I don?t work for google, or any affiliates, I?m a mechanical engineer not a software engineer.

Oh and the spyware comment is not only unfounded, it?s just plain ignorant. Most, if not all, of google?s projects, including chrome, are open source, so YOU can go look at the code and see exactly what chrome does in its spare time.

[rob1400]

Can't agree more. Have tried Chrome and don't know what it is good for. Firefox is much much more capable than it. Never mind Chrome.

[tm_anon]

@xylyx3d
Chrome sends data back to Googles database, it's well documented and well remarked upon. FF3.1 at last test beat Chrome in ever respect save Googles own new app. FF itself doesn't have a memory leak, it's when you use the addons that you suddenly discover that some people can't write code. I currently use Flock and am loving it. Between the two browsers, more Press about Flock would be well founded, especially since it's been out of beta for a while now. Its own new features are more noteworthy than several of the "features" I've read about with Chrome, such as sending your data back to the Google database for one. It's also based on open source, using the same rendering engine as FF. It takes the stance that maybe, just maybe, people want to be able to actually use web 2.0 in a new way, without having to go to the sites. FF is more capable than Chrome, but in order to make it do what Flock does, it would take a huge amount of addons, if you can even find an addon that lets you drag and drop an image from the web into a clipboard or post to your blog without going to your blog site directly from your browser. I've mentioned many times before, but if Chrome weren't made by Google, would anybody know about it?

[jaxstephens]

I hate to say it, but I think Google shot itself in the foot by releasing Chrome too soon with such a poor feature base in comparison to Internet Explorer and Firefox that most people's experience has been like mine. I installed it. I thought some of the ideas and the speed was cool. But it's basically like a shell of a browser--missing core functionality. That was the last time I used Chrome, and I don't plan on taking a second look until it's close to par in features with the big boys. Chrome was released too early, and now the first impression has already been made.

[Robert G K]

"Hotmail only works with Chrome if users launch it with a particular command-line option to fool Microsoft's e-mail site into thinking it's not using Chrome."

Are you using the newest version of Chrome? Hotmail works fine, I just tried it. I don't know if it didn't work in older versions (I use live mail for email), but it works in the newest version.

[Shankland]

Perhaps it's not a universal problem. I don't use Hotmail regularly, but Google cited the Hotmail issue in its latest release notes.

http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/getting-involved/dev-channel/release-notes/releasenotes0415433

Google says::

Hotmail still does not properly recognize Google Chrome, so to use the site, you have to add the following to the shortcut you use to launch Google Chrome:

--user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.19"

Right-click the shortcut, click Properties, and paste the line above to the end of the Target field.

[AppleSuxLeo]

It renders many pages wrong. Out of Beta ? It`s still Alpha ! Fast but so lacking.

[Clarious]

Well, I hate to say it but when will linux/mac version arrive?

[kevin1gsi]

chrome is the best. FF people are just mad that it snuck up on them. Add ons are over rated. I want speed and reliability and light weight that is FF.

[Jyakotu]

Google products never go out of beta. GMail was released in 2004 I believe and it's still in beta. It's just a Google thing to keep all of their prodcuts infinite beta. That way, when users find new bugs, Google can ride on the back of "it's just a beta, you'll find bugs." They're too afraid to put thier products out of beta because they'll realize that their programs aren't perfect.

[n25philly]

Great, more garbage software to uninstall off of new systems. When will people stop being memorized by the name "google" and notice that everything they make from this crap browser all the way to their search engine are garbage that simple never works the way it supposed to.