Google Chrome running on Leopard

I received with great joy today the news that Google’s web browser, Google Chrome, has been officially released for Mac (and Linux), even if it is still tagged as beta.

Since its first appearance in the web browsers scene more than a year ago, Google Chrome has been a source of innovation the area, with isolated processes per tabs, a revolutionary javascript engine, and the great news that its source code would be freely available as open source.

Sure that many were worried by its controversial privacy-violation practices, but the openness of its source code will always allow anyone with the know-how to modify it to their own needs, and that of the worried ones (me included to some extent, I’ll give you that). Indeed there’s a project called Iron which offers precisely that: Google Chrome for the privacy fanatics.

But just as about anything that’s new, Chrome for the Mac and Linux has several shortcomings compared to its Windows version that most people are accustomed to. The Apple Blog notes a few of these issues, at least those that affect Mac users, which are probably the same features not present yet in the Linux version as well. The most striking absence, at least for me, is Gears, of which I have become extremely dependent since Gmail offline appeared. This one even comes as a great negative surprise, since Chrome is the only browser that comes with Gears bundled, and being both (Gears and Chrome) from the same provider, I kind of assumed that they were inseparable

Not everything is bad news though. Google Chrome for both platforms integrates itself very well, or so they say. At least for the Mac I can confirm it. Google Chrome feels more like a Mac app than Opera does, which is kind of surprising if you take into account that Opera has been around for the Mac since, well, forever, I guess. And according to the official announcement in Google Chrome’s blog post about this beta release, Chrome seems to blend just well with a variety of GTK themes.

I really hope that this browser and the open source project behind it continue to improve. This news today is indeed a big step, and I’m sure those differences in feature sets will become smaller with time. I also hope that projects similar to the Iron alternative appear for other platforms too. Its open source nature makes it possible for this to come true.