Did Google botch their release of Chrome?

A bit of time has passed since Google Chrome was released. As yet, there is still no working build for Linux. Of course there is always Wine, which many people took advantage of, but now Google has eliminated the download of Chrome which would actually run under Wine, while the other installer for XP will not work for Wine (as far as I know). Now I know they are only offering a working version of Chrome for Windows, and have made no promises other than the fact that they are working on a version for Linux and Apple, but could they not cater at least a little bit to the rest of us? Even if they don't offer a real version other than the Windows Beta (and I personally think they very well could have had versions for all three platforms without too much trouble), did they really need to eliminate the download that would work under Wine? Personally, I think they botched this. In the end it kind of turns me off Chrome. I was pretty stoked at first, because it looked like a great browser, but they have worked pretty hard to cool things off by having a typical 'ho-hum' attitude (or so it seems) about offering Chrome for other platforms.

I didn't vote because I couldn't relate to any of the options. But if anything, I would be closer to the "Stop Whining" answer. Although I don't feel it like that.

I think Google doesn't give a crap about Linux users. And its about time we wake up to the Google phenomena and once and for freakin' all understand the Cinderella story that tucked us in some years ago, has now became a simple and usual case of a multi-billion dollar company interested in money.

Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong however is we failing to shift our attention to this fact and still regard Google as a goody two-shoes that wants to save the world. They aren't and they don't. And because we aren't paying attention, we aren't being more critic of Google activities. I've seen more angry superlatives about Firefox compatibility in Linux than I ever heard of Google's Chrome obvious 0% compatibility in Linux.

In my opinion Google didn't launch yet to the Linux version because:

- They have better things to do. Or so they feel.

- They couldn't care any less for a population of computer users amounting to an outstanding 2% of the total computer users who can't even agree on which distro to use and what graphical interface to look at.

- Lack of of distro portability is becoming an issue Google probably doesn't want to deal. The Linux distros tree is already a very stupid thing. But Linuxes Trees? Please no!

- They don't want to follow the asinine GPL and be forced to give-back to the community. Again, this is Google. Not Sun or Red Hat.

- The noise currently coming from the Linux community too busy backstabbing itself in the back and calling each other names is just too much and its better if you just close your door on them and let them have their private civil wars (I hope Open Source wins and Richard Stallman rots on a trench).

I could come with with some more, but I don't want to make this rant any larger than it already is. Obviously none of these reasons are probably why Google ddn't have a Linux versions yet (although you'll have an hard time convincing me the second isn't.) But they are part of what is deadly wrong with Linux and why positions like Google just don't draw a sympathetic pro-linux movement like they would in the past.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

- They don't want to follow the asinine GPL and be forced to give-back to the community. Again, this is Google. Not Sun or Red Hat.

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Chrome is released under the BSD license, which is more liberal than the GPL, so I don't think the Linux community would be too unhappy about that.

I voted they didn't botch the release because technically, they didn't release it for Linux.

Plus, they are planning to release a Linux version later. So what if it's a few months later? It's not like there aren't other browsers for Linux.

Actually there is a 3rd party that already has compiled a version for both Linux and Mac OS X and they have released it. I installed it on my Leopard machine last week.

http://www.codeweavers.com/services/ports/chromium/

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The noise currently coming from the Linux community too busy backstabbing itself in the back and calling each other names is just too much and its better if you just close your door on them and let them have their private civil wars (I hope Open Source wins and Richard Stallman rots on a trench).

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What have I missed? Or is it nothing that emerged recently?

I see nothing wrong with Chrome's release. The percentage of linux and apple users is still a lot smaller then window users. It makes sense to release it to windows and start getting feedback and then work on the other OSs.


Oh and I completely agree that Stallman needs a good whacking. GPL isn't free.

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Originally Posted by CornedBee

What have I missed? Or is it nothing that emerged recently?

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Nothing major that I'm aware. Just the mindless same internal warring that sees no end. There's however always amazing new things that just keep happening all the time and make me constantly end my popcorn & soda stockpile.

http://mdzlog.wordpress.com/2008/09/...nux-ecosystem/
http://izanbardprince.wordpress.com/...-is-necessary/
And of course the whole "OMG! I can't click OK on an EULA without loosing my virginity!" in Ubuntu.

>In my opinion Google didn't launch yet to the Linux version because:
>- They have better things to do. Or so they feel.

I (sort-of) agree with this. Google knows there is a strong development community out there that will create linux and mac ports, so why should they bother putting the man power in.

> - They couldn't care any less for a population of computer users amounting to an
>outstanding 2% of the total computer users who can't even agree on which distro to use
>and what graphical interface to look at.

I don't think there's an issue of agreement anywhere. The great thing about linux is choice and control over everything.


>- Lack of of distro portability is becoming an issue Google probably doesn't want to deal.
>The Linux distros tree is already a very stupid thing. But Linuxes Trees? Please no!

I've never heard of any of these "issues"....

>- They don't want to follow the asinine GPL and be forced to give-back to the
>community. Again, this is Google. Not Sun or Red Hat.

Actually, Google is pretty active in the open source community. They've contributed over 1 million lines of code and open sourced over 100 of their projects (see http://code.google.com/opensource/).

I'm not really much of a linux individual.
So as for the whole no linux port, I don't really care if they release it on linux or mac, as long as they release it on Windows, as they did. They can do whatever they want.
However, I don't agree on the whole thing that they should keep Wine in mind. Wine is not perfect, and this is a Windows release we're talking about, not a Wine release. What works best on Windows is what they should choose, whether it works under Wine or not. Because it's a Windows release. It wasn't designed to run with Wine in mind, and rightfully shouldn't be crippled because of it.
A linux version not running as good as the Windows versions would be a different matter, which I'll agree should not happen because it's unfair.
So I'm choosing stop whining. They didn't make Chrome for Wine, so don't expect it to work. Whine on the Wine devs instead.

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Originally Posted by Perspective

Google knows there is a strong development community out there that will create linux and mac ports, so why should they bother putting the man power in.

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That being my point.

I don't think it would be wishful thinking for google to hope the Linux community to port the code. There's more to Open Source than just a way to look at the code.

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> - They couldn't care any less for a population of computer users amounting to an
>outstanding 2% of the total computer users who can't even agree on which distro to use
>and what graphical interface to look at.

I don't think there's an issue of agreement anywhere. The great thing about linux is choice and control over everything.

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It's my opinion that "choice" is for the most part not true and it's becoming more damaging than beneficial.

I can agree with the term if the Linux community is the first to acknowledge this feature and doesn't spend all their time fighting internal wars over which distro is better or who provides more upstream code, devaluing the work of who doesn't. "Choice" is also better understood if it is of real value. But there's very little in value in Choice when most distros are redundant. And there's very little in terms of "Choice" also when it comes at the cost imposed by the GPL.

It's damaging in my opinion because it's fractioning and distracting the community. There's an actual ideological war going on inside the Open Source community the details of which I cannot really fully understand.


It's also damaging because contrary to what you seem to think, there's indeed incompatibilities between distros, libs and applications and these will tend to grow as new distros and new versions keep being thrown on to the market faster than rabbits can breed. Otherwise you wouldn't need projects like the Linux Standard Base, neither you would read things like this, http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.a...age.devel/6831.

But the LSB has been under the scope since probably day 1 for too many reasons, from inaccurate compatibility tests and results to accusations of ideological orientations and being biased. And the impact of this project has been all but inexistent.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

And there's very little in terms of "Choice" also when it comes at the cost imposed by the GPL.

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Cost? What cost? Are you talking about the viral nature of the GPL? What's so bad about that?

And what would you rather have done?

As much as Virus as it is a Leech draining resources -- it requires upstream contributions. There's nothing free on this -- and inhibits any chance at commercial distribution of software based on GPL. Since it is also viral, the GPL is not copyleft and is limits the spread of Open Source software and its adoption by commercial oriented projects.

The issues around GPL are many and well know, so I don't see the point in discussing them other than to make clear my position: I do consider GPL an illegal licensing scheme. EDIT: Or morally objecting.