5 ms·

How does Google get away with not ever supporting previous releases? Don't customers demand this?

phasmantistes 11y ago
A nit to pick here: Google releases Chrome, not Chromium. We only provide Chromium as a source repository, not binaries. Other independent entities (such as Linux distros) can provide releases of Chromium, but Google does not. That said, Google doesn't support previous releases for security reasons. We are constantly improving the security profile of Chrome, and hackers (both black hat and white hat) are constantly finding exploits in older versions. (The same is true for all the other major browsers on the market.) If you want to use Chrome on a previous/older release, please don't. If you want to use Chromium on a previous/older release, also please don't, but you can compile it yourself if you're so inclined. And for the most part, no, customers don't demand stable old releases of Chrome. They've learned how bad of a security and usability mistake that is from IE6, and they don't want to repeat past mistakes any more than we do.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > And for the most part, no, customers don't demand stable old releases of Chrome. They've learned how bad of a security and usability mistake that is from IE6, and they don't want to repeat past mistakes any more than we do. I suspect that there are lots of enterprise customers that haven't learned that (encountered it, but not learned it), but they probably aren't Chrome customers, since they are still using IE.
  - bengoodger 11y ago
    While we acknowledge some people might think they want this feature, it's been something we've been unexcited about helping them with it for the reasons stated. Having the ability to quickly deploy security fixes is fundamental to Chrome's ethos. This is as close to a point of religion for the Chrome team as you can get.
    - tyingq 11y ago
      I suspect IT customers actually wanted something in between the two extremes. Your existing IT customers may feel okay about it now, but could change their minds if, for example, a fairly drastic UI change is pushed out.
aboodman 11y ago
It depends on what you mean by "customer". The chrome team has traditionally viewed end-users as the customers. Normal people who just want to use the web and have it work well. Those people could care less how the program is updated ... the less they have to worry about, the better. And having Chrome automatically update means that they are always safe from malware, the browser continually gets better, and works with the newest websites, without them ever having to do anything at all. If you instead view IT departments as the customer, then yes, they care and want to have control over the deployed version of the software on their networks. Chrome does have some controls for this. I'm not that familiar with them, though.
- qznc 11y ago
  There are certainly end users who are confused when the UI changes. Those users are usually incapable of using the bug tracker or complain otherwise. Kongregate currently tells you chrome broke Unity with its current version and you should use Firefox instead. If previous versions are not available, switching browsers is an alternative workaround.
  - aboodman 11y ago
    Sure. There are downsides to continuous updates too. Engineering is about tradeoffs. You can't implement everything someone might want. The desire to have the product continuously improve is in direct conflict with the desire to have the product never suddenly break. In this case the team believed the positives dramatically outweigh the negatives and I agree. Continuous silent updates are one of the best features of Chrome. All consumer software should have it.
deathanatos 11y ago
I've seen some mild demand for it on occasions where there's a debilitating bug in Chrome. Fixes almost never (never?) get backported, so if you want it, you have to upgrade off stable to the more bleeding edge, and then follow that release as it stabilizes, or wait. Sometimes this up/downgrading is just plain onerous. The two bugs that come to mind are a. a font bug whereby the wrong (fallback) font was selected; this happened quite often on Wikipedia and b. gestures would flat out stop working randomly. AFAIK, these are both long fixed, but the experience on stable during that time was pretty bad. Thankfully in the many years I've used Chrome, such bugs are exceedingly rare. As a developer, I wouldn't recommend an old browser solely for security reasons, but also so I can stop support ancient browsers sooner…

A nit to pick here: Google releases Chrome, not Chromium. We only provide Chromium as a source repository, not binaries. Other independent entities (such as Linux distros) can provide releases of Chromium, but Google does not. That said, Google doesn't support previous releases for security reasons. We are constantly improving the security profile of Chrome, and hackers (both black hat and white hat) are constantly finding exploits in older versions. (The same is true for all the other major browsers on the market.) If you want to use Chrome on a previous/older release, please don't. If you want to use Chromium on a previous/older release, also please don't, but you can compile it yourself if you're so inclined. And for the most part, no, customers don't demand stable old releases of Chrome. They've learned how bad of a security and usability mistake that is from IE6, and they don't want to repeat past mistakes any more than we do.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> And for the most part, no, customers don't demand stable old releases of Chrome. They've learned how bad of a security and usability mistake that is from IE6, and they don't want to repeat past mistakes any more than we do. I suspect that there are lots of enterprise customers that haven't learned that (encountered it, but not learned it), but they probably aren't Chrome customers, since they are still using IE.
- bengoodger 11y ago
  While we acknowledge some people might think they want this feature, it's been something we've been unexcited about helping them with it for the reasons stated. Having the ability to quickly deploy security fixes is fundamental to Chrome's ethos. This is as close to a point of religion for the Chrome team as you can get.
  - tyingq 11y ago
    I suspect IT customers actually wanted something in between the two extremes. Your existing IT customers may feel okay about it now, but could change their minds if, for example, a fairly drastic UI change is pushed out.

aboodman 11y ago

It depends on what you mean by "customer". The chrome team has traditionally viewed end-users as the customers. Normal people who just want to use the web and have it work well. Those people could care less how the program is updated ... the less they have to worry about, the better. And having Chrome automatically update means that they are always safe from malware, the browser continually gets better, and works with the newest websites, without them ever having to do anything at all. If you instead view IT departments as the customer, then yes, they care and want to have control over the deployed version of the software on their networks. Chrome does have some controls for this. I'm not that familiar with them, though.

qznc 11y ago
There are certainly end users who are confused when the UI changes. Those users are usually incapable of using the bug tracker or complain otherwise. Kongregate currently tells you chrome broke Unity with its current version and you should use Firefox instead. If previous versions are not available, switching browsers is an alternative workaround.
- aboodman 11y ago
  Sure. There are downsides to continuous updates too. Engineering is about tradeoffs. You can't implement everything someone might want. The desire to have the product continuously improve is in direct conflict with the desire to have the product never suddenly break. In this case the team believed the positives dramatically outweigh the negatives and I agree. Continuous silent updates are one of the best features of Chrome. All consumer software should have it.

deathanatos 11y ago

I've seen some mild demand for it on occasions where there's a debilitating bug in Chrome. Fixes almost never (never?) get backported, so if you want it, you have to upgrade off stable to the more bleeding edge, and then follow that release as it stabilizes, or wait. Sometimes this up/downgrading is just plain onerous. The two bugs that come to mind are a. a font bug whereby the wrong (fallback) font was selected; this happened quite often on Wikipedia and b. gestures would flat out stop working randomly. AFAIK, these are both long fixed, but the experience on stable during that time was pretty bad. Thankfully in the many years I've used Chrome, such bugs are exceedingly rare. As a developer, I wouldn't recommend an old browser solely for security reasons, but also so I can stop support ancient browsers sooner…