Google leaves freetards in the dust

Posted at 12:57 am in google, ubuntu

A quick update on the new Google browser.

Seems like they’re working hard to make it available on all the platforms. But something in my head says we can forget it for at least 1/2 months. Maybe much more. Too bad.

 

Written by Stefano Forenza on September 2nd, 2008

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7 Responses to 'Google leaves freetards in the dust'

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  1. Chris | 2 Sep 08 at 4:02 am

    I don’t know about the rest of you, but I plan to try running it on Wine tomorrow. :)

  2. John Gill | 2 Sep 08 at 8:47 am

    This is more than a little unfair on Google. If you read the announcement you link to you will see that they hit the send button a little prematurely with the comic and so have decided to push forward the release.

    At least give them the benefit of the doubt re: their statement that a Mac/Linux version is in the works. If it is out within a month then given the premature release I don’t think you can complain too much.

    Sure, google have their own interests, but the fact is that their interests are heavily aligned with the free software movement — a software monopoly is bad for google. I don’t think you should underestimate the amount of momentum that google has provided for open source.

  3. Stefano Forenza | 2 Sep 08 at 12:23 pm

    @John: yes, everytime this happens from google it makes me disappointed.
    No, they didn’t hit the send button too soon. That’s plain wrong as much as I understood.

    I do give them the benefit of doubt, and I am sure they will release for linux. My prevision is it will take months to them, though.

    @Chris: I have my doubts that browser will run on WinXp or Wine. We’ll see.

  4. Vadim P. | 2 Sep 08 at 9:36 pm

    The line that the browser will be later made to run on Mac and Linux was republished in BBC and Toronto Star, so I’m pretty sure it made into news stories everywhere else also. They would have a hard time not keeping the promise then.

  5. Chris | 2 Sep 08 at 9:40 pm

    I tried it under wine, and it didn’t work. :(

    However, it is possible to enter your email address at http://www.google.com/chrome and they will notify you when the Linux version comes out.

  6. Stefano Forenza | 2 Sep 08 at 10:25 pm

    @Chris: I just came here to warn you that it didn’t work :(.
    Also the source code is not yet available, it seems.
    Virtual machine FTW (as long as you have a valid xp license), but I am not any longer curious about it.

  7. Stefano Forenza | 2 Sep 08 at 10:41 pm

    Trying it out on vm right now. The interface is very clean, not even a menu bar.
    The actual (bare minimum) menu it’s invoked by a menu on the right of the location url.
    On windows Xp (dunno about Vista) the text on webpages is not anti-aliased as we’re used to on Firefox linux.

    There’s an option menu that allows to “Link the webpage as an applications”. Long story short, it creates a link on the desktop (and/or in the start menu) that will open the bookmark in a toolbar-less window.

    Despite the hype it doesn’t seem anywhere faster than a normal when running Gmail or GoogleReader (but keep in mind i am on a vm right now).

    Doesn’t seem anything I’ll miss, for now.

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