http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/10/google-takes-chrome-out-of-beta/

"Google vice president Marissa Mayer announced Google Chrome is coming out of beta in an interview with Michael Arrington at Le Web 08.
...."

[in Paris, France]. One of the conference's partners is Google.
http://www.lewebparis.com/partnership.html

Possibly today?

That would be nice,

The message earlier stated that Chrome would come out of beta by january.

http://blogoscoped.com/forum/145332.html

Out of beta? That's a joke, right? Maybe "out of alpha" is a more appropriate description.

Ionut I wonder if it's a strategic business decision and not an honest-to-users technical decision. I don't know... Techcrunch writes "The Google’s open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs [original equipment manufacturer] who can’t offer the browser until it is in full release."

If they bring it out of Beta, does that mean they are ready to release Mac and Linux versions too?

Phillip You are most likely right. Wouldn't this be Google's first product to get such an early beta removal?

<<The Google’s open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs [original equipment manufacturer] who can’t offer the browser until it is in full release.>>
Couldn't they just say they have their own "special" requirements for stuff to leave beta? =P

Colin, that would be nice, but probably not. The mac and linux versions are still only crudely working

Wonder: the Google homepage wasn't in Beta at the beginning :) It was only added a bit later...
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-04-21-n63.html

it is out of beta!!!

Official Blog Post:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-chrome-beta.html

Note how the BETA has strikethrough tags surrounding it in the browser's title? Nice of them to show Blogger's still got bugs and is out of beta... ;-)

Also, this didn't show up in Google Reader with a strikethrough since you can't format titles like that...

Wow, sooner than expected, and without a mac version :(

100 days in beta vs. 1715 days Gmail Beta :D

much to early...

Google "beta" has always never really meant much of anything, anyway – it's been constantly misused for a decade.

*Jaw drops*
What?

I'm speechless.... out of beta? So quickly?
How could this come out before Gmail and Docs?

Google pretty much destroyed the meaning of "beta" anyway, so this doesn't really surprise me.

Here's a Googler's perspective:

<< Some people associate Google with never-ending betas. GMail, for instance, is still in beta. Remaining in beta was never the intention for Chrome; we always had a simple goal to take Chrome out of beta as soon as it we had data to prove that it contains enough features, stability, and performance that real users would be happy with it as a primary browser. We hope we’re at that point.

Our goal is to move quickly with new features and fixes for Chrome. More needs to be done and more is coming. >>

http://www.belshe.com/2008/12/11/google-chrome-released/

> we always had a simple goal to take Chrome out of
> beta as soon as it we had data to prove that it
> contains enough features, stability, and performance
> that real users would be happy with it as a primary browser

So by that account, would that suggest Google linked to a program from their homepages which was instable (or not yet proven to be perfectly stable) ...? After all, Google linked to Chrome from e.g. google.com even when it was still in Beta.

Even though I believe that google is missusing the term beta, wouldn't it make more sense to say that google chrome should have been out of beta for a few months already. After two weeks after release – like most products (except for web 2.0) – the real bugs where patched and it should have gone out of beta. Why are some people confusing the real meaning of beta with google's use of it...? @Ionut: I am kind of referring to you, out of alpha would normally mean "feature freeze and let's get the bugs out of it!"

PS. None the less I would have preferred to see them call it version 0.5 or something and release it as version 1 once they would have cross platform support.

phillip: would make sense, if you want to make sure everything works fine it would make sense to release it to the "great testing public" and analyze the anonymously sent data. Millions of pages loaded in a few days... thousand of hackers trying there luck on it. Far easier then most open source project where you have to rely on a small involved group of testers.

So far, it is more stable vs the last release. I'm actually using it more now. Since 1.0, it has yet to hang or crash on me at work whereas before, it was slow on certain sites and would crash often.

Also, obviously getting this app out of beta and therefore onto new OEM hardware is a high priority as well.

Now, if they would just make an option for setting separate proxy connections like FF does instead of piggybacking on IE. And oddly, I still have to log into the proxy every time I open it even though I don't in IE.

OEM releases is all this is due to. They won't ship a box with a browser tagged 'beta.' It's all about coziness with the manufacturers.

Firefox beats Chrome in JavaScript speed test:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336517,00.asp
9th Dec – by Michael Muchmore

"Until yesterday, the browser with the fastest JavaScript performance was Google's pre-beta Chrome, but with the release of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, that's all changed.

When I ran the well-respected SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test, I confirmed that the new rendering engine, Gecko 1.9.1, is not only significantly faster than Firefox 3's, but actually takes the lead from Chrome.
....."

I need an RSS reader build in ... :D
And a Mac version ;)

Google started to work on RSS reader

"Google is taking Chrome out of Beta, but they haven't taken the Beta out of Chrome".

Stupid people probably still use IE. The windows users.
The smart people use FireFox : which works on all OS
OR
Chrome .. which is for Windows.

Feels like they kinda missed the boat here. Because I don't care about Windows, or Internet Explorer.

This is my rant, beta .. IT IS. Point of a browser is ,.. you get your stuff and access and personalized things, whereever you are.. regardless of computer.. or operating system.

I don't want to sign up for some newsletter waiting for the Mac version, I want to use it or not. They made the choice for me. I am sticking to FireFox 3.1 for the next year. And wait until its really out of beta and not just a marketing PR deal.

> I need an RSS reader build in ... :D

You have it. It is called Google Reader (or Bloglines, or whatever you like to use). The whole point of Chrome is to shift the perspective from the browser to the individual web apps you use to accomplish your task (hence the name Chrome).

Of course, it might happen that the people don't want to shift their perspective too much, so Google will have to relent. It has happened before, with the Delete button in Gmail. However, it is ridiculous to think Gmail didn't have Delete button at first because its programmers were not competent enough. The same, IMO, holds for Chrome and RSS reader.

Veky
You can't subscribe to feeds like in Firefox, you have to get the URL of the feed then paste it in to Reader. I belive there's a bookmarklet out there that lets you do it, but it's not built in

I've noticed that everytime Chrome linked to from google homepage, that there is an update:

http://img525.imageshack.us/my.php?image=googlechromeupdatedxp8.jpg

And they have used Orkut to get people in Brazil and India to use it too. When you access it from any other browser Orkut homepage has a message "Try accessing Orkut from Chrome" or some such message

If you access it using Chrome it says "Good, you're accessing it using Chrome. Be sure to feed it cookies!"

:-)

Roger: Nice! ;-D

Chrome is not ready for prime time yet.
I use it extensively on different wintel hardware and it freezes very often.
When in a rush, I switch to FireFox or IE.

I've just discovered that when you want to download Google Earth, now there is a pre-checked checkbox "Install Google Chrome".....
:-(

Do you have a screenshot Tom? Is Chrome somehow used in Earth?

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_sX07BzIRc2s/SUpLSsph3mI/AAAAAAAAAaw/t0Dckre1SYY/s640/gearth.JPG

Google has to stop this shit.

In other news about the browser,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10125679-2.html