Google Details Successes of its Chrome Release Process

[Guest]

Google's Marc-Antoine Ruel, a software developer at Google, has providing some fascinating insight in the Chrome release process, an effort that he described as "upgrading 200 million users within 6 hours."

Google Details Successes of its Chrome Release Process : Read more

 

[nikorr]

Good reading.

 

[ztr]

Thus Chrome is successful with its rapid releases and FF on the other hand is.......

 

[Camikazi]

O good lord they are using the word magical to describe something now?

 

[soccerdocks]

This release process is why it actually makes sense for Google to increase its version number every six weeks, contrary to what most people on this site seem to believe.

 

[freggo]

Is there an actual technical reason why Chrome can not run on Win 2k?
Firefox can, Opera can, SeaMonkey can...
Or is M$ paying (or otherwise encouraging) companies to make their products incompatible with older OSes so they can force the sale of whatever OS they happen to be offering that day ?

 

[Ragnar-Kon]

[citation][nom]ztr[/nom]Thus Chrome is successful with its rapid releases and FF on the other hand is.......[/citation]
Perhaps this isn't what the majority feels, but here is the difference for me:

Google Chrome updates pretty much without my knowledge. I personally thought I was still running 11.x.x. Turns out (just checked) I'm running 16.0.912 and I had NO idea. Being an IT person, at first it was kind of scary that it updated itself without my knowledge, but Google has yet to break a core functionality, so I'm okay with it.

Last time I used Firefox, it bugged me every moment it is running for an update. I know it sounds dumb but sometimes I just don't want to click the update button. When FireFox moved to a rapid release schedule, it was bugging me even more. That in combination with changing the interface from the classic 3.5 interface is the two major reasons why I switched to Chrome. Of course Firefox might now be doing silent updates for all I know, but too little too late for me. Now Chrome has me sucked in with features like Sync, Cloud Print, and the OmniBar.

[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]Is there an actual technical reason why Chrome can not run on Win 2k?[/citation]
Don't get me wrong, Windows 2000 is a fantastic operating system, and is probably still my favorite version of Windows even with Windows 7. But common now... it is time to move on, it is 11 years old.
As for why Chrome doesn't support Windows 2000, I would assume because Windows 2000 costs extra money and time to support. Since Windows 2000 has less than a quarter of a percent market share (<0.25%), they probably felt like it wasn't worth it. And actually, I agree with them.

 

[madooo12]

[citation][nom]freggo[/nom]Is there an actual technical reason why Chrome can not run on Win 2k?Firefox can, Opera can, SeaMonkey can...Or is M$ paying (or otherwise encouraging) companies to make their products incompatible with older OSes so they can force the sale of whatever OS they happen to be offering that day ?[/citation]
if this'll make MS loose, google would do it
and if there is a cost to support win2k mozilla (non-profit), opera (low profit), and others support it

 

[JOSHSKORN]

I'll just be happy when we can all stop playing "Version Wars". I'm a bit tired of installing updates all of the time. That, and we need more 64-bit browsers to choose from, other than IE9 and Nightly, which you have to update...nightly.

 

[Benihana]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]I'll just be happy when we can all stop playing "Version Wars". I'm a bit tired of installing updates all of the time. That, and we need more 64-bit browsers to choose from, other than IE9 and Nightly, which you have to update...nightly.[/citation]
Agreed, I'm still holding out for FireFox 64 myself. If nothing else, at least this way it can use more than 2.1 GB of RAM.

 

[Christopher1]

[citation][nom]Benihana[/nom]Agreed, I'm still holding out for FireFox 64 myself. If nothing else, at least this way it can use more than 2.1 GB of RAM.[/citation]

There is already a 'Firefox 64'. The Nightly version has a 64-bit release that works quite well, is compatible with all add-ons that I have tried, etc.

 

[soundping]

I use chrome 17 dev and the updates have slowed quite a bit.

 

[Benihana]

[citation][nom]Christopher1[/nom]There is already a 'Firefox 64'. The Nightly version has a 64-bit release that works quite well, is compatible with all add-ons that I have tried, etc.[/citation]
True, but I'm not too involved with browser testing myself, and prefer to stick to the released versions.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Interesting reading. I might be tempted to give Chrome a try and see what its like.