Developer preview of Google Chrome on Mac OS X and Linux

Developers can now download an early version of Google Chrome for 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.