I’ve been excitedly anticipating the release of the new Chrome browser from Google, but now that it’s out in beta for Windows, I don’t think I’ll be using it very much.
It’s too bad, because I was just thinking what a good thing Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox have been, pushing innovative features and forcing the more dominant player, Microsoft, to more aggressively advance its own Internet Explorer browser.
So Chrome only shines for Windows, at least for now. Odd, I think, coming from a company that is heavily reliant on Linux and full or at least well-stocked with its own Linux users and developers. It also adds to Google’s somewhat peculiar series of statements and moves on open source licenses.
It’s even more frustrating to see Google release Chrome — which itself is open source and, like Safari, based on the Webkit open source framework — but not support Linux. For all of its talk about choice of browser, Google’s rollout of Chrome only highlights the lack of choice on OS.
However, it is not these issues or reservations that will keep me from using Chrome. I’ll shut down my primary computer and boot it up in Windows to give Chrome a try after things have calmed a bit, but I really don’t enjoy using my Windows very much (not as much as Linux), and use is limited mainly to Webinars and rare instances when a vendor or project provides support only for Windows. Luckily for me, those instances are occurring less and less. And when Google gets around to putting Chrome on Linux, I’ll be ready to really take it for a drive.
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