Why the later launches of Chrome for Mac, Linux?
Google is finally acceding to customer demands for Mac and Linux versions of its open-source Chrome browser, promising to release full versions of Chrome for Mac and Linux in the first half of 2009.
According to Brian Rakowski, Chrome's product manager, more work is needed first:
That (Mac development) team now is able to render most Web pages pretty well. But in terms of the user experience, it's very basic. We have not spent any time building out features. We're still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right.
So progress needs to be made, but at least it's firmly on the agenda. The real question for me is, why wasn't it top of the agenda from the beginning? No offense to Windows users, but Mac and Linux users have tended to include a wide range of early adopters (especially in the Mac camp) and technically savvy people (especially in the Linux camp).
Aren't these the sorts of groups that Google would want using its software?
I understand the desire to cater to the mainstream majority that uses Internet Explorer, and I also can appreciate a subversive interest in smacking Microsoft around a little by offering a competing browser on the Windows platform, but I still find it odd to introduce a disruptive browser on that most nondisruptive of operating systems, Windows.
The evangelists live on the Mac. The geeks that will hack new extensions live on Linux. Both are devout and generally faithful to (formerly) underappreciated operating systems.
I would have started with these, but at least Google has now set a date for spreading to them.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Which browser is the less standard-compliant? Internet Explorer! (IE8 even works bad in Windows 7, see Ars Technica review!)
Mac users have Safari/Firefox/Opera.
Linux users have Firefox/whatever...
Although Firefox has gained a lot of traction on Windows, MS is still strong. So, a bigger name must push the line!
I'm a Mac user. I would like to use it now. But I'm almost fully (and fast) served with Safari and Firefox.
Also, why would you need to introduce a "disruptive" browser to a "disruptive" OS? It's preaching to the choir.
Google Chrome is already on Acid 3 and they're working on an extensions feature to rival Firefox.
IE 8 beta 2 just manages to get the first part right, and then tacks on a sorry attempt at extending functionality called accelerators (yea it's nice, but the sad part is the feature could be recreated in a Firefox extension).
And if Google saw Windows as the best operating system in the world, they wouldn't be using Linux for their servers, or would they be supporting Ubuntu, or have created Android, etc...
Of course, Chrome is just spyware so who cares how well it is written?
- by InsaneNinja January 12, 2009 9:13 PM PST
- The obvious reason is that they are more concerned with getting more market share out from IE. Since any webkit (safari) browser is already upgraded enough to present their javascript systems faster.
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