“After this press conference to announce Google’s new Web browser, Chrome, Google cofounder Sergey Brin asked BoomTown’s Kara Swisher if she’d try it out. ‘But you don’t have a Mac version, baby, so no,’ Swisher tells him in this clip, excerpted from Swisher’s longer interview,” Nicholas Carlson reports for ValleyWag.
“‘I know, I know, it’s embarrassing,’ says Brin,” Carlson reports.
As for when the Mac version will arrive, the best Brin (who’s using VMWare to run Chrome on his Mac) could offer was, “I’m asking every day. I hope it’ll be a matter of months.”
Full article, with video, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Brin’s right, it is embarrassing; even more so in that it will take “months” for Google to free its founder from having to slum it with Windows via virtualization in order to run Chrome on his Mac while begging his developers daily for what they should have delivered on launch day. Hey, Sergey, thank Jobs there’s Safari, the world’s best browser: it works on your Mac natively, it’s WebKit-based, and it’s really, really, fast!
Which begs the question – with so many Windozed developers to hack away at the WebKit open source instead of the Objective-C version, I hope they don’t screw up a good thing. It’s telling that MSFT’s biggest competitor still relies on or is focused on Windows first when it comes to developing something still tethered to the desktop. Lame.
Embarrassing is right!
Chrome is based on WebKit and there is no Mac version.
Truly embarrassing.
You’d think someone with his money would have made sure the Mac version was available, if only so he could use it.
There is no single best browser yet.
Safari, Omniweb, Firefox all have their own powerful advantages.
It’s known in the tech world as “Pulling an Adobe”.
Months? And that’s probably a best case scenario.
I figured it was right around the corner.
This probably a intentional….
It appears that Google is hell bent on beating the crap out of Microsoft. So they want to get a version out for Windows right away to start their assault on internet explorer.
The Mac is not that critical since Safari is already there and Safari is not the Dragon they are after…
For Google the Goal is to take down Microsoft ASAP.
Why do we need a Google browser?
I think the bigger news is that Google’s Android will be Chrome plated. Google is stepping up its attack on Microsoft (Windows and WM) but there could be collateral damage to Apple (Mac OS X and OS X iPhone), Blackberry (BlackBerry OS), Nokia (Symbian), and Linux.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210300395
@ R2
My thots exactly. Months? I figured it would be a couple of weeks at most, given the Webkit engine.
I do hope it gets traction against IE but they are going to have to cut some deals with Dell, HP, et al. Otherwise, I think it’s just going to splinter the non-IE market.
@Shinobi
I agree, Google’s goal isn’t browser domination, it’s breaking IE dominance and helping boost the support for open web standards. Safari already does an excellent job of doing this on the Mac, so why spend resources there?
Don’t fret though people, having Chrome on Windows is still going to put pressure on Apple to make a better Safari for Mac, since they also make Safari for Windows and will always make sure the Mac version is better.
Yep, embarassing, since WebKit comes from Apple’s Safari team.
I was using Chrome for a couple of days on my work PC, which I luckily have the ability to install applications on. Seemed screamingly fast, much faster than IE and a bit faster than Firefox (using Safari on Windows freaks me out for some reason), but I’m not using it now.
For some reason, my computer would periodically grind to a halt for about 20 seconds and then work normally. After a few minutes, it grinds to a halt. Not sure what the issue was, but it stopped happening after I closed Chrome and opened up Firefox again.
Just throwing that out there in case others see something similar.
These days I use virtualization on my Mac to run Windows Safari. Why? Because I can.
What’s even more embarrassing is that Picasa still hasn’t made it to the Mac… I don’t expect much from Google other than to distract MSFT. Most of their (Google’s) stuff is crap-tastic.
“. . . it’s breaking IE dominance and helping boost the support for open web standards.
It’s also an attack on operating systems in an attempt to make apps entirely web based.
Android>Chromium (Chrome)>Gears, Apps and App Engine
It matters not, there’s no Mac version and only a windows version.
These are just computer platforms and before long there won’t be any platforms… only Google.
No more desktops, just Google.
Google.
Google. Google.
Unlike most developers out there for whom Mac port is an afterthought and usually make no excuses for it, Sergei Brinn openly admits this as an embarrassment. Have you ever heard Bruce Chizen admit so much about, say, Premiere for Mac ( or anything else for Mac, for that matter)?
There may be a strategic reason behind this Mac delay here, though. Google considers Apple a strategic ally, regardless of their Android competitive project. In general, Google’s initiatives are squarely aimed at Microsoft and they will always try to work at avoiding scraping Apple in the process of bludgeoning MS.
It is in Google’s interest for Safari to maintain its market share against IE, at least for now. Also, I don’t think Google is to much concerned about the fact that Apple’s market capitalisation surpassed Google’s recently. The two can comfortably dominate the IT world with complementary offerings.
@ ericdano
If you have to ask, you wouldn’t understand.
From what I have read, the most important part of Chrome is that each tab runs as its own process. Should one tab freeze or crash, it wouldn’t affect all the other tabs.
This is something not readily apparent to the average user.
Why would Google want to do this? For Google apps, their web based applications that that Google pans to have compete against MS. If you have multiple tabs working on multiple documents, you only lose the work in that tab, and not all the others.
Right now, when Safari locks up, if you do a Force Quit, you lose all your tabs. So there is more to it than just WebKit.
Of course that’s better than MS Internet Explorer, where if the browser locks up, you have to reboot the whole computer. Hence the nickname “Internet Exploder”. (At least such used to be the case. I haven’t used Exploder {or Windows!} for some time now, so I can’t say that is true for the latest versions. This exploding “feature” is part of why I gave up on Windows.)
their web based applications that that Google pans to
their web based applications that Google plans to
We apologize for the inconvenience.
“Why do we need a Google browser?”
Who’s we? Never mind. (And I apologize if you are royalty.)
Of course, there’s the answer. Google did it on purpose so it wouldn’t effect Safari market share, even though Chrome is a far greater threat to Safari adoption on PCs than Macs.
Yet another in the long line of excuses from Google apologists who can’t fathom that two of their favorite companies are on the verge of becoming adversaries. Everything they do that steps on Apple’s toes is somehow good for Apple.
Can’t wait to hear the excuses after Android is fitted for a new breed of touchscreen PMPs competing with the iPod touch. Oh yeah, it’s gonna happen.
No problem…We can use Yahoo search until you get your Mac version of Chrome up and running
“Why do we need a Google browser?”
The reason we want it is simple. You do not want it to be “unavailable for Mac”. Everytime there is something hot that isn’t available, it is ad for us. Whether it’s a browser an Adobe product or a hot game, it is bad.
Apple should kick off Al Gore first, then consider Eric Schmidt. He has known about this for awhile. In order to have a true force against IE, there HAS to be a Mac version!
I would love to hear Sara Palin say she loves her Mac and iPhone…worth a freebie. Apple Store Anchorage anytime soon??