Google's Chrome to Exit Beta?
How long has Google's Gmail been in beta? Years. And yet a report indicates that Google wants to take its Chrome web browser out of beta, only three months after its first beta release. Seems difficult to imagine, what with the product's still buginess, but there's an apparent method to this madness.
According to TechCrunch, VP Marissa Mayer gave them the news at Le Web 08. The reason for taking the browser out of beta makes sense: many OEMs want to bundle the browser with their PCs, but are unwilling to do so with a beta product, although Mayer did not specify an exact date.
Still, to "artificially" call what is a relatively buggy product a 1.0 version in order to make some deals seems questionable judgment, and some would say ethically questionable. It's still plenty buggy and can't even be used with Hotmail without adding a user-agent string to the shortcut used to launch it.
In general it's going to be a great browser, particularly when they get extensions that mirror, as Google has said it wants to do, many of those already in Firefox. For now, we wouldn't consider changing from Firefox to Chrome.
Despite the word about the upcoming release of a Windows version, there's still no word on when a version of Google Chrome will be available for Mac or Linux.
According to TechCrunch, VP Marissa Mayer gave them the news at Le Web 08. The reason for taking the browser out of beta makes sense: many OEMs want to bundle the browser with their PCs, but are unwilling to do so with a beta product, although Mayer did not specify an exact date.
Still, to "artificially" call what is a relatively buggy product a 1.0 version in order to make some deals seems questionable judgment, and some would say ethically questionable. It's still plenty buggy and can't even be used with Hotmail without adding a user-agent string to the shortcut used to launch it.
In general it's going to be a great browser, particularly when they get extensions that mirror, as Google has said it wants to do, many of those already in Firefox. For now, we wouldn't consider changing from Firefox to Chrome.
Despite the word about the upcoming release of a Windows version, there's still no word on when a version of Google Chrome will be available for Mac or Linux.
