Google Chrome Stable: As the name suggests, a stable release of the web browser that has been tested extensively. Aimed at the end user and computing environments where only stable releases are used.

Google Chrome Beta: The beta releases often contain features that need to be tested by a wider audience. They are not stable yet but more thoroughly tested than the developer releases.

Google Chrome Dev: Google Chrome developer releases have been the cutting edge releases for some time. They get updated often, may contain new features but also bugs that need to be sorted out before the features are added to the beta channel.

Google Chrome Canary: The new cutting edge version of the Chrome browser. Canary releases are not as often releases as Chromium snapshots but more often than dev releases. These builds get the new features first before they are added to dev builds, providing they cause no problems.

Chromium: Chromium is the Open Source part of the Google browser. Chromium may get updated several times a day. The browser does not contain Google browser specific features.

Which Google Chrome browser is right for you?

That question is not that easy to answer. If you like to test new features you may want to consider downloading the dev or canary versions of the browser. Users who do not want to experience bugs may prefer the beta or stable releases.

Download Google Chrome

Google Chrome Stable: http://www.google.com/chrome
Google Chrome Beta: http://www.google.com/landing/chrome/beta/
Google Chrome Dev: http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?extra=devchannel
Google Chrome Canary: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/chromesxs
Chromium: http://build.chromium.org/f/chromium/snapshots/

Which version of Google Chrome are you running on your system? Let me know in the comments.

Retrying the download yielded the same results. The first thought was that this was related to a single file or server, that acted up strangely.

But the problems persisted and after trying to download a dozen different files, all with a file size of 50 to 200 Megabytes, it became clear that Google Chrome was the problem.

Examples of files are the Emsisoft Emergency Kit with a size of 103 Megabytes, some Mediafire downloads with a size of about 180 Megabytes each, and downloads over at Softpedia, like Kaspersky’s Small Office Security.

All downloads stopped at approximately the same size, 36.7 or 36.8 Megabytes. File extensions were also different, including archive formats like zip or executables like exe.

There does not seem to be a fix for this issue yet, and it is not clear if all Chrome versions are affected or only the latest developer release, version 6.0.466.0.

All downloads were completed successfully in other web browsers like Firefox, which seems to confirm that this is a Chrome-only problem. This also is the workaround for users who experience the same download problems.

The test system was running Windows 7 Pro, 64-bit. Have you been experiencing the same troubles? Let us know in the comments.

Update: The issue has been fixed in the latest Chrome dev release.

Google Chrome 4 fixes 13 security vulnerabilities that affect previous versions of the web browser. Six of the vulnerabilities have been rated as high by the security team which usually indicate vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to take control of the computer system.

* [3275] Low Pop-up blocker bypass. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
* [9877] Medium Cross-domain theft due to CSS design error. Credit to Chris Evans of the Google Security Team.
* [12523] Medium Browser memory error with stale pop-up block menu. Credit to Jacob Balle and Carsten Eiram, Secunia Research.
* [20450] Low Prevent XHR to directories. Credit to the Chromium development community.
* [23693] Low Escape more characters in shortcuts. Credit to Michal Zalewski of the Google Security Team and, independently, Inferno of SecureThoughts.com.
* [8864] [24701] [24646] High Renderer memory errors drawing on canvases. Credit to Michal Zalewski of the Google Security Team and Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
* [28566] High Image decoding memory error. Credit to Robert Swiecki of the Google Security Team.
* [29920] Low Corner case failure to strip Referer. Credit to the Chromium development community.
* [30660] High Cross-domain access error. Credit to Tokuji Akamine, Senior Consultant at Symantec Consulting Services.
* [31307] High Bitmap deserialization error. Credit to Mark Dowd, under contract to Google Chrome Security Team.
* [31517] Low Browser crash with nested URL.

Users running a previous version of the Google Chrome web browser – which can either be a release version of a developer version that has not been updated yet – are encouraged to either update to the stable version that has been released by Google to the public or to the latest dev versions that do not contain the security vulnerabilities as well.

The stable version can be downloaded from the official Google Chrome website (only available for the Windows operating system).

The pre-beta release adds several requested features to the web browser. Among the form auto-completion, full page zooms, a middle-click auto scrolling feature, user profiles and Greasemonkey support. The later still has to be activated by launching the Google Chrome browser with the -enable-user-scripts parameters. This is best done using a shortcut.

The release notes for this release contain all changes including interesting ones like the force SSL mode which will only load https sites in the browser. That’s a pretty clever method of getting rid of most phishing related dangers on the Internet.

Check out the instructions on how to download early release versions of the Google Chrome web browser.