Google Returns Chrome To Beta, Touts Speed Boost

CWmike writes "Google yesterday reversed its decision to ditch the beta label from its Chrome browser, saying it is restoring the moniker to some builds to get faster feedback to developers. 'Since we took the 'beta' tag off Google Chrome in December, we've been updating two release channels: developer and stable,' said Brian Rakowski, a Chrome product manager, in a new blog Google kicked off on Tuesday. 'With our latest release, we're re-introducing the beta channel for some early feedback.' The first beta, Chrome 2.0.169.1, includes several new features, said Rakowski, and it boasts a significant speed increase over the current stable version of the browser, 1.0.154.48. According to Google's tests, the beta is 35% faster than the stable build when measured by the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite, and 25% faster on the company's own V8 tests."

Reader Al notes too that "Google has launched Chrome Experiments, a site where Javascript coders can upload projects that make use of Chrome's speed and processing abilities. The site already features a handful of cool 'experiments' including a balls that jump between browser windows, a gravitationally-challenged version of the Google homepage and a game that runs through nine different browsers. It's cool stuff alright, but some experts wonder whether browser security might be a more important thing to focus on."

No Linux Release != Evil

[andrewd18]

Just because a company's informal motto is "Don't be evil." doesn't mean they have to release their products for Linux.

Now I think it'd be unwise if they didn't release it for Linux, but it definitely doesn't make them evil.

worst summary ever

[jgarra23]

Chrome is not in beta, there has ALWAYS been beta builds around for Chromium & they are advertising those builds more since the new features are pretty solid (and the speed too) but Chrome is NOT in beta.

Re:No Linux Release != Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Except they are releasing it. It's just gonna be a while (current build is "experimental"). There will be a linux release eventually. It's not particularly evil when it's difficult to create cross-plaform software with the goals google has in mind for the browser (It will probably require various hooks into the specific operating system). It's to be expected that they focus on windows first.

This is so misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

The article summary refutes itself.

There are multiple Chrome release channels.

There is a stable, non-beta channel (1.0.x).

There is a beta channel (2.0.x stable-ish).

And there is a dev channel (2.0.x, bleeding edge, weekly builds)

They are not "returning" Chrome to beta. They are working on the next version of Chrome.

The version numbers are kind of a big tipoff. FYI.

Re:Is it going to come to Linux?

[IceFox]

Who cares about 90% of software, we are talking about browsers. Browsers come on all platforms these days. And to top this Chome is advertising on slashdot which is known for have tons of Windows Loving users and users who like to talk about windows only software in positive ways. As long as Chrome does not exist on LInux or exists in a form that is a joke expect it to get trashed on slashdot. And for the second part I have contributed to Chrome [blogspot.com] to help get it to compile on Linux, but it is a long way off before these is anything close to what a user would expect. Chrome really has a PR problem with Linux which a lot of early adopters use.

Hilarious that speed is key evaluation

[presidenteloco]

I find it vastly amusing the amount of press that browser "speed" gets (compared to trivialities, like, say, "usability in peoples' computer-based work patterns").

Ok sure, javascript engine speed might be important, but javascript clearly is inadequate as a rich-client development platform anyway.

I for one do not sit here on my macbook or my dual-core 2.6GHz 2G RAM pc and think to my self "damn these 70 browser windows and tabs are rendering slow - damn damn damn". No, I pretty much never have to think about that, thanks to good work done by hardware and software engineers over the last 15 years or so.

Speed is SO NOT the key issue anymore. Netbooks prove this. Usability in the context of always-on info and my persistent context and where the hell is the stuff I was working on etc. is way way more important as a surfing quality of life issue.

Re:Hilarious that speed is key evaluation

[castorvx]

I'm guessing you don't use some pretty heavy duty JavaScript sites? There is a substantial difference in performance between browsers on some sites, and I say this with a very high powered system.

There are a lot of performance issues that could still be resolved. While your other points are relevant, I would say that the issue of performance is a long way from being resolved, and not just with JavaScript.

Re:No Linux Release != Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking a 14. Seeing as how a browser with what, 4% market is being asked to make a version for a loosely confederated set of GNU/Linux based OS'es with a less than 5% market share?

So they would run on, let's see, 3,752 machines?

Re:Hilarious that speed is key evaluation

[WoLpH]

There is a very simple reason for it, speed is one of the few things that can be measured objectively. All forms of usability tests tend to vary per person.

That makes it really easy to post some benchmarks while any article about usability will be bashed to no end.

Re:Who asked for this?

[rockNme2349]

Google's applications all run based on javascript. The current browsers didn't run javascript very fast, so performance lagged. Google released a browser and spat really fast javascript in the face of mozilla and microsoft. Next thing you know firefox and ie have new releases with faster javascript to compete with chrome. People switching to chrome is just a side affect for google. They're goal of making other browsers faster is completed. I have to say, evil or not, they're really smart guys, and know how to get what they want.

Re:If it doesn't run on Linux it is trash.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since no one cares about your opinion, e.g. "trash", just stuff it. Fact is, running on Linux will have little impact on the usage of Chrome.

Re:Who asked for this?

[nschubach]

I think the Mozilla javascript engine projects (Tamarin turned Tracemonkey) were well on the way before Google "spat" out Chrome. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

faster? so what?

[CAIMLAS]

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but what's all the fuss with a "faster" browser, at this point? They're pretty damn fast as they are (pick one). The big problem, in my mind, is their memory use. That goes for both "normal running" memory use, and "my god it's leaky" memory use.

Currently, Firefox is running with 360M virtual and 131M resident memory utilized. The browser window has been open for 85 minutes with exactly 20 tabs - no flash, and 1 slashdot page. I've got to shut down firefox due to excessive swapping/poor system performance more often than I used to have to reboot Windows 9x due to stability issues!

Firefox, IE, and Opera have all shot up in their memory use extremely quickly - to the point where Firefox has become almost unusable on my laptop with 512M, while having Tbird and OO.org open at the same time. And that's only with about 20 tabs open, noscript, flashblock, and a bunch of other things to reduce the memory overhead.

Just because RAM is cheap doesn't mean you should leave people out in the cold who have older stuff. Likewise, if you bloat your products, porting them to portable devices (cell phones, etc.) is going to be a bit troublesome: RAM doesn't seem to be having the same speed or capacity leaps that CPUs are - and in a portable, sticking more RAM in is only going to decrease battery life.