“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??
Who’s embarrassed? The 90% of the world that uses Windows isn’t.
Must be a problem with Apple, they’re always last to the table anytime something is cross platform. Must be very difficult to code for the Apple platform, especially when it’s such a small share of the market.
The embarrassing thing is that even using Webkit they’re unable to make it work on the Mac.
Wow, there’s a huge misunderstanding here about WebKit. The rendering engine used was not developed by Apple for the Mac; it was developed by the KDE team for Linux. Apple wrapped it in an adapter library and has made some improvements, but it is not originally Apple software.
There’s nothing wrong with this (it’s actually really great that Apple finally got over NIH Syndrome) but you guys owe a huge debt to the Linux development community that made WebKit and Safari possible.
thginot,
90% of the world uses Windows? 75% of them use it at work.
See if your IT team will let you download and install any software on your workstation. Mine won’t. I put iTunes and Google Earth on mine and they removed it. It’s against company policy to install any unapproved software.
Asks his employees? He asks them?
I would have told them “You get the Mac version out posthaste, or empty your desk. Pick one.”
@ thginot
You should at the very least read the reasons from the source before spewing written dysentery onto this thread and embarrassing yourself.
http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/09/platforms-and-priorities.html
“In order to make sure Chromium feels right, each platform’s version is being built by people who live and breathe that platform; the engineers working on these versions are long-time Mac and Linux engineers who are just as picky about the details as anyone. It’s also not just the engineers; Macs and Linux machines are very popular at Google at all levels, so progress is already being followed avidly across all levels of the company.”
While I would really love to have a Mac version of Google Chrome right now, I understand Google’s motivation in releasing the Windows version first and foremost – to get people off of IE. That, to my mind, is the single most important thing Google Chrome can help do.
So in that sense, going with a Windows version *now* makes sense – they want to get some more widespread testing done on the platform where the battle will be fought the hardest.
And once the Windows version is fighting fit and ready to go, I expect Google to start persuading PC makers to preinstall Chrome and set it as the default web browser (in the same way they’ve been getting Google Toolbar installed by default on today’s PCs) – that’ll definitely start taking a bite out of IE’s numbers.
Doesn’t stop me from wanting to play with Google Chrome on my Mac *now*, of course; but considering the big picture helps me understand why they’ve set their priorities the way they have.
From what I’ve heard (from other sources) the JavaScript engine that they are using has problems on the order of being locked into windows (referencing memory addresses, hard coded values, etc). Most likely that’s the primary reason why Chrome isn’t on the Mac or on Linux yet, they worked on getting the JS engine as fast as possible, but in doing so they got lazy on keeping it cross-platform.
Well I installed Chrome. The best thing I can say about it is that it’s not unpleasant. It needs work and I am inclined to probably not use it again, at least until it is out of beta, which means as with all things Google, I possibly won’t use it again anytime soon.
Right off the bat I enjoy using the same tools on OS X that I use on Windows and there is no Mac version of Chrome. (Shame Google, shame.)
It’s fast, but no faster than Firefox or Safari under OS X. I’m running it on a flaming fast Alienware m9750 laptop with 2GB of RAM under Windows VISTA pretty much stand alone.
It’s nice to look at and though the lack of UI busyness is ultimately where I’d like to see all software go, it takes some getting used to. Most users will have trouble finding the “Control Current Page” button to get at the commonly used menu options of other browsers.
I typically always install Firefox for clients but I wouldn’t install this for clients. It would utterly confuse them.
Google loves iterative development but I can’t see how this guy is going to catch up to Firefox and Safari, ever. (Does anyone ever worry about catching up to I.E.? I doubt it.)
What is more likely to happen is that others will look at the “under the hood” innovations offered by Chrome and mimic them. Having the tabs in separate threads seems like a good idea and I understand the advantages but I can’t say that my entire browser got hung up very often.
All in all I don’t dislike Chrome, I’m just not moved to make it a constant tool.
I also have an issue with Google being the be all end all of the Internet.
I personally want to see Google address their core competency (search engine), and leave all the myriad of other ideas to those experts. I am not looking forward to Android. I couldn’t dislike their online applications more, and I am highly annoyed by advertising in my search results.
Why do they think we need them to create yet another browser? They have plenty of other work to do.
By the way. This will *never* get people off I.E.
The browser statistics were pretty much static until a little trojan horse called the iPhone showed up and boosted Safari up.
Most people will still blindly and uncaringly use I.E.
Those of us that hang out on these websites throughout the day aren’t normal.
Seriously. Look in the mirror. Are you normal? No. I didn’t think so.
Now go outside and look at the “normal” people. How many of them do you guess care about Chrome Vs. Firefox Vs. I.E. Vs. Safari?
That’s right not many, but I bet a large portion of them use computers and the vast majority are Windows and the vast majority of those use I.E. because it was there when they got the computer.
I’m posting now with IE7 and it works just f
Yes, Chrome is based off WebKit. Yes WebKit runs on Mac. But keep in mind that Chrome is using an entirely new from the ground up JavaScript engine called V8.
V8 does some interesting tricks to achieve its performance gains, such as compiling the JavaScript directly into machine code. No other current JavaScript engine does this. And let me be the first to say that I won’t be surprised if PPC Macs will be excluded when Chrome arrives for Mac.
I guess my point is that this isn’t just about WebKit. Things are slightly more complex than this discussion would lead one to believe.
But yea, Chrome for Mac please.
“Most people will still blindly and uncaringly use I.E.”
Also known as, “I access the intarwebs by clicking on the blue E” phenomenom.
“What kind of computer did you buy?”
“It’s a Windows Vista computer.”
@wannabe, yes, I know WebKit was built on top of KHTML (that’s why WebKit was released back to the open-source community), but every press release I’ve seen says Chrome was built on WebKit, not KHTML. That’s why I referred to Apple’s Safari, and not to KDE.
‘embarrassing’?
I go into gmail today, and see an ad for Chrome. I’m on a frickin macbook. Google sucks today, my iPhone 2.02 OS is flakey as hell Apple sucks today, and Obama has met his match with Palin. Obama sucks today.
Time for me to end it all.
signed,
Microkia, the newest republican.
I have installed Chrome on my work supplied pc (which I never use) to check out the cold hard facts. Yes it is easy to use, I could see grandparents across the nation using this due to it’s lack of buttons and “I’ll do that for you features”. However for us .mac/me users, you loose a lot of what iweb was designed for. Beautifully wonderful depth. None of the shadows that I have placed so carefully display. I am sure I could work around it with Photoshop CS3 but there goes easy. I have noticed this with Firefox as well. IE does it though, and of course Safari. Check it out.
http://www.historicparkhill.com
Nice non-sequitur, Goople. Angry much?
Do you have the self-control to stow the political shit rants?
“Time for me to end it all.”
Please don’t tease.
@Modbus –
He’s only a thread match, and goes nowhere without you throwing fuel on him.
Take a Xanax and let’s all move on…
Re: Historic Park Hill
Bummer! I use Firefox and can’t see the shadowing, and it does make an aesthetic difference on the page.
It makes me wonder what else am I missing on other pages on the web. Is my web experience being compromised?
Sure, I may get the information I want, but obviously not those little extras that make life more enjoyable.
Yes, this isn’t about world peace, but still…
And, yes, I used Safari to check out the differences. Hmmmmmm…… I might give Safari another chance. I think the old dog in me didn’t give it a fighting chance in the first place, having just moved back to the Mac from Windows, where I used Firefox.
Time to fire up Safari and use it on a semi-regular basis and see if it fills my needs. It sure does open a lot fast.
Now, get back to work!
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@Modbus,
…it wasn’t a teas…er hold on, I’ve got an incoming call from Mr. Reaper
@ StarkReality
“…the vast majority of those use I.E. because it was there when they got the computer.”
Two words for you: Google Toolbar.
How do you think it ends up pre-installed on so many PCs?
Now ask yourself, how long do you think it will take Google to get Chrome to be pre-installed on those same PCs, and set as the default browser?
Never give up hope for an internet freed from the shackles of IE.
Well, when it gets here I’ll give Google Chrome a run on me Mac
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I can’t get to my gmail with chrome. WTF?
I work for Google and let me tell you, the Mac version is on everybody’s lips right now….as well as Linux. Remember the phrase, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
No Brin, Embarrassing is the reviews Chrome is getting.