Developers can now download an early version ofGoogle Chromefor Mac OS X and Linux.
Google product managers Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg warned
ordinary web users not to download them, as the software was still
at an early stage of development. "Whatever you do, please don't
download them! Unless of course you are a developer or take great
pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing
software," they posted on the Google
Chromium blog.
The early release does not allow users to view YouTube videos,
change privacy settings, set default search provider, or print,
Smith and Grunberg warned.
Chrome is Google's
rival to Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox, which has
been optimised to run web applications such as Google's Office
suite.
Experts believe Google will use Chrome to make desktop operating
systems like Windows Visa, Mac OS X and Linux irrelevant. With
Chrome, and future generations of browsers that support the Chrome
architecture, applications will run within the browser, rather than
rely on the functionality of the underlying operating system.