Switch from Beta to Dev:
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-unstable

Switch from Dev to Beta:
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta

That’s easier for me than going back for the .deb file and doing something with it.

Also, if you want to check whether a new dev version of Chrome is out, you can just repeat the same command:
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-unstable

and if there’s no new version, you’ll get something like this back:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
google-chrome-unstable is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

I figured I’d document this in case I needed to remember how to do it in the future.

You can fix this annoyance in Chrome. Right-click on the address bar and select “Edit Search Engines…” (You can also edit the search engines via the Options menu.) You can either edit the Google option or add a new entry; I added a new entry. Added: you can’t edit the entry for Google, so you have to make a new entry. I set the URL field to be “{google:baseURL}search?q=%s” (without the quotes).

Now when you search for [flowers] the url is just http://www.google.com/search?q=flowers . Ah, nice clean urls in the browser bar.

Update: Chrome expert and fellow Googler Peter Kasting points out in the comments that “Doing this results in no more NavSuggest or Search Suggest in the omnibox dropdown — a real quality loss. NavSuggest especially is extremely valuable.” Peter has a good point: search suggestions can be very helpful. It’s up to you to decide whether you prefer search suggestions or a clean Google url. For most people who don’t cut-and-paste Google urls all day long, it’s probably better to stick with the default search option that gives you search suggestions.

Pretty cool. But I discovered an extra little tip. If you go to Google Bookmarks, you can find a bookmarklet that will let you bookmark random pages as you surf. Then you can edit the bookmarks — for example, I added the words “Chrome market share” to three different metrics companies that I check each month:

The cool thing is that if your search matches the text that you added, that bookmark will show up in your search results:

This can be really handy. For example, at the start of every month I do the search [chrome market share] to bring up this blog post I did so that I can find the links to the three metrics services. But now I have those services bookmarked and I can access them right from the search results. Good stuff.

By the way, did you notice that unusual Google logo in the image above? There’s a great Chrome extension that lets you pick a custom Google logo. Right now I’m using the Google logo for the Tapati Rapa Nui festival in Chile. (Full-disclosure: a member of my team, Tiffany Lane, wrote the Chrome extension to change the Google doodle.)

Whoa. I just clicked on a Greasemonkey script in the latest dev version of Chrome (4.0.266.0 on Linux). Chrome offered to install the GM script, so I said okay. The script ran perfectly in Chrome with no changes at all! I don’t know how many Greasemonkey scripts will run in Chrome unchanged, but at least some will.

Last week brought that news as an official announcement. My guess is that scripts that don’t use specific Greasemonkey APIs should be fine.

(Side-note: I found a good post from November that claims that ~60% of Greasemonkey scripts don’t use any sort of special API calls at all. The top API calls appear to be GM_getValue and GM_setValue (16.5% of Greasemonkey scripts), plus GM_xmlhttpRequest (15.5% of Greasemonkey scripts). It’s unclear which of these functions might be worth supporting. Some could have security implications (GM_xmlhttpRequest). Others like the get/setValue functions could be done by using other ways to store data.)

So this is cool. There’s a good chance that your favorite Greasemonkey script might just work in Chrome. Personally, I recommend the dev channel version of Chrome. It gets all the cool features early, and it’s been very stable/fast for me.

Then, the tech blogs started swirling with rumors that Chrome for Mac would be released into Beta this week. I figured the rumor was solid, and it was. Chrome for Mac and Linux has, indeed, been released into beta.

I installed it but didn't notice too much difference - because, as I said, things had been running more smoothly lately. What I like about Chrome is how much screen space you get because the Tabs are running in the, um, chrome above the toolbars and address bar - where normally you have a bunch of wasted space.

Chrome has lacked extensions, but that's another new announcement today. Extensions have been launched into beta, as well. But not for Mac. That's something Apple fanboys will still have to wait for.

For the last 30 days, here are my Google Analytics stats for mattcutts.com:

For me, 8.97% of my readers run Chrome, up from 7.04% in March 2009.

Some different browser marketshare numbers:

- Net Applications says that Chrome went from 2.59% to 2.84% from July 2009 to August 2009.

- StatCounter gives daily stats. I’m seeing 3.31% on Saturday August 1st to 3.59% on Saturday August 29th.

- Clicky says that in the last 60 days, Chrome has gone from 3.376% to 4.004%:

So after one year, three different sources report market share of 2.84%, 3.59%, and 4.004%. That’s pretty good for 12 months. More importantly, Chrome has pushed all browsers to be faster, more modern, and generally better.

I’m also looking forward to some of the fun things coming in Chrome. Features like bookmark syncing and themes in the latest developer or “dev” release of Chrome are quite nice. If you’re adventurous, you can also try dev versions of Chrome for the Mac and Linux too. And if extensions are your thing, those are coming along as well.

Does anyone know of other sources for browser marketshare? How do the browser stats look for your site(s)?