After a long wait, Google’s Chrome browser is now available for Apple Macintosh and Linux computers. In a blog post Tuesday, Brian Rakowski, product manager for Chrome, announced that beta versions of Chrome are now available for Mac OS X 10.5 and later (Intel only) and several flavors of Linux, including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. In addition, Rakowski announced the availability of extensions for the Windows and Linux versions of the browser.
The announcements are important for Chrome, said Tim Bajarin, principal analyst with Creative Strategies. “Chrome is designed to be a web OS that is especially tied to Google’s own web apps. It also serves as a light client,” he said. “Ultimately, Google needed to support all CPU and OS platforms for this to work in their favor and allow them to have direct connections to users to deliver future apps and services.”
A ‘Hefty Dose of Goodness’
“We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we’ve focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X,” Rakowski said.
On the Google Mac blog, engineers John Grabowski and Mike Pinkerton wrote that the Mac software takes a “hefty dose of goodness from the Windows version” of Chrome, including the Omnibox search bar, which combines searching and entering URLs, themes from artists, and speed. The browser looks and feels like a native Mac application, they said, with Mac-style animations when users open bookmarks, for example.
A Linux version of Google’s browser was especially important to the company, given the importance of the open-source operating system internally. “At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux,” Rakowski wrote.
Extending Chrome for Windows
Chrome for Linux provides…