feipoa wrote:

I have sent a complaint to Google.

That will surely accomplish something.

Does anyone know where I can find 34.0.1847.137 m as a stand-alone executable?

You should look for Chromium builds. (In fact, it's quite possible that Chromium builds will continue to ignore minimum system requirements.)

Not sure if this is a joke or not.

feipoa wrote:

Such behavior may be the turning point for Google as an internet monopoly.

Yeah, not supporting a 13 year old processor will surely be their downfall.

But where's the point in changing one flag in compiler just to make program incompatible with non-SSE2 processors? This won't improve the performance on computers that have Williamette/Northwood P4, nor any modern CPU.

triostatis wrote:

But where's the point in changing one flag in compiler just to make program incompatible with non-SSE2 processors? This won't improve the performance on computers that have Williamette/Northwood P4, nor any modern CPU.

Do you know that's the case, and that they haven't optimised parts of the browser or webkit to use SSE2 or above with this release?

feipoa wrote:

Such behavior may be the turning point for Google as an internet monopoly. .

Heh. I think Google has been "evil" for years now. As hard as I am on modern Microsoft, I never cease to be amazed at the type of crap Google can get away with that would have people screaming bloody murder if it had come from Redmond.

Anyway, have you tried the Chromium win32 builds? It might be possible to compile your own Chromium build without SSE2 targeting if you're really invested in it.

SquallStrife wrote:

Yeah, not supporting a 13 year old processor will surely be their downfall.

This would knock out Athlon XP support too, although point taken 😉.

Somehow I think all the 'optimization' seems misguided (like rendering the browser in a 3D API which would add to the problem of rendering pages as textures going through the bus taking even more memory than you'd need). Javascript is always a big bottleneck as is the stuff like 'chrome' markup in the interface itself.

leileilol wrote:

Somehow I think all the 'optimization' seems misguided (like rendering the browser in a 3D API which would add to the problem of rendering pages as textures going through the bus taking even more memory than you'd need).

A genuinely optimized browser would be something like K-Meleon, which uses the Windows API instead of a cross-platform user interface layer. But there is something to be said for ensuring a uniformity of experience across different platforms such that a web page will reliably look the same no matter what you're using to look at it.

SquallStrife wrote:

Yeah, not supporting a 13 year old processor will surely be their downfall.

A turning point does not necessarily mean Google will fall because of this one aspect of their product specifications. It is meant to imply that these types of changes in policy, e.g. not allowing for the download of 2-month old software or not allowing the option to "install anyway", may significantly alter customer perception of the company and lead them in alternate directions for internet software. For me, this was the final blow for a once great company turned irrevocably sour, albeit they were already on the path towards user distaste. While the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuits turned many users sour on Windows, this aspect of Google has done it for me. I am contemplating cancelling my Gmail account, Picasa, etc.

Steam even values their non-SSE2 customers. They had a couple of SSE2-required regressions in recent Steam client betas that they fixed on later just this month. Relevant because their internal browser is also Webkit-powered (which ironically, enforced the SSE requirement in the first place...)

This kind of thing annoys me big time..just can't trust Google and any other Google like company out there to maintain support for older hardware..that's why I never use anything older than a s775 p4 to connect to the Internet...I just have my core 2 duo as my dedicated Internet machine and my pIII and pii and older retro systems sitting happily on a kvm ready to be used offline ..There's no point in using my older systems to run chrome anymore when I can just get a p4 for free these days...that said though it does not make it right and I totally understand people that want to connect perfectly fine old hardware and their personal retro all in one systems to the net...it shouldn't matter to Google how old your cpu is.

feipoa wrote:

It is meant to imply that these types of changes in policy, e.g. not allowing for the download of 2-month old software or not allowing the option to "install anyway", may significantly alter customer perception of the company and lead them in alternate directions for internet software. For me, this was the final blow for a once great company turned irrevocably sour, albeit they were already on the path towards user distaste. While the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuits turned many users sour on Windows, this aspect of Google has done it for me. I am contemplating cancelling my Gmail account, Picasa, etc.

We live in a time where there are perhaps more Internet-connected devices in the world than people. How many of them do you honestly believe are impacted by the kinds of things you're experiencing here?

They're annoying for you, I'm not saying otherwise. But how many people really care if they can't install old versions of Chrome, or install Chrome on ancient hardware, or both? There's a pretty severe lack of perspective here: believing that your extreme edge case represents a threat to "customer perception" is hubris.

retrofanatic wrote:

This kind of thing annoys me big time..just can't trust Google and any other Google like company out there to maintain support for older hardware..

Modern Linuxes won't install on a 486 any more, there's no Chrome for Workbench 3.1 on an Amiga, you can't run Winamp on your IBM 5150. Who decides what's "too old to support"? Where's the cutoff? Who decides? Nobody can support everything forever, you have to draw the line somewhere.

EverythingOldIsNewAgain wrote:

Heh. I think Google has been "evil" for years now. As hard as I am on modern Microsoft, I never cease to be amazed at the type of crap Google can get away with that would have people screaming bloody murder if it had come from Redmond.

Or the US gov't, or Hollywood, or EA, or Valve, etc. 🙄 +1 and agreed. 😀

Anyways, to the original thread: it isn't really that surprising - you're talking about a 14-15 year old machine finally running into end of support (which is very impressive if you stop and think about it). That's like complaining, in 2000-2001, that your Macintosh 128k couldn't run Internet Explorer 5.0. 🤣 I'm not trying to disparage the old machines, just to provide some context - it's a very old piece of equipment that's day has come and gone many years ago. I don't think it's unreasonable that they're assuming folks will have something that's "new" within the last decade - it's not like they're requiring you to have a pair of 16-core CPUs and 22TB of disk space just to install the program or something. I certainly will agree with "get rid of Google" ("search" engine and all), but I'll also agree that maybe a newer box would be a good choice for browsing the web too. 😊

I am not sure when the desktop version of the PIII-S 1400 was discontinued, but perhaps mainstream implementation from OEM's ended around 2004? CPU-World lists the embedded version being discontinued on July 30, 2012.

Not supporting legacy hardware is only part of the grievance. The greater annoyance is disallowing the download of a 2-month old revision of the browser. As far as I know, not even Microsoft has gone to such extreme. When trying to download an old version of Chrome from oldapps.com, this message comes up, "Google Chome 32.0.1678.0 (Dev) was either harmful to your computer or it was pulled from our servers for another reason." It is possible that Google asked oldapps.com to remove old revisions from their servers.

The oldest revision I could find for download anywhere was 26.x. Has anyone been able to locate 34.x?

feipoa wrote:

Not supporting legacy hardware is only part of the grievance. The greater annoyance is disallowing the download of a 2-month old revision of the browser. As far as I know, not even Microsoft has gone to such extreme. When trying to download an old version of Chrome from oldapps.com, this message comes up, "Google Chome 32.0.1678.0 (Dev) was either harmful to your computer or it was pulled from our servers for another reason." It is possible that Google asked oldapps.com to remove old revisions from their servers.

Honestly, they're doing the Internet a favour by keeping old, exploitable versions of their browser out of circulation. It doesn't suit you and your edge case, but there are big benefits.

Remember that Chrome is based on the open source Chromium. If you require an older version of the browser, get an appropriate version of the source from their repository and build it yourself.

Stop viewing these things as a personal attack on you.

This may be of help: http://crportable.sourceforge.net/

SquallStrife wrote:

Honestly, they're doing the Internet a favour by keeping old, exploitable versions of their browser out of circulation. It doesn't suit you and your edge case, but there are big benefits.

Remember that Chrome is based on the open source Chromium. If you require an older version of the browser, get an appropriate version of the source from their repository and build it yourself.

+1. Or look for another browser built on Chromium; the "new" Opera comes to mind. Safari might work as well. There's other, non-Chrome-based browsers out there (the few that are left, at least).

Doesn't Chrome still install its own auto-updater that will merrily update the browser whether you want it or not whenever it happens to feel like it?

Chrome, if I am not mistaken, was designed with complete simplicity in mind. This is probably entirely satisfactory to 99% of users. For everyone else, there's Chromium. (Providing the source code of their browser for free! How inhumanly vile.)

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't Chrome still install its own auto-updater that will merrily update the browser whether you want it or not whenever it happens to feel like it?

To phrase it differently, it's designed so that every time you launch it, you're running the latest version. This is understandably desirable from a security point of view.

Jorpho wrote:

Chrome, if I am not mistaken, was designed with complete simplicity in mind. This is probably entirely satisfactory to 99% of users. For everyone else, there's Chromium. (Providing the source code of their browser for free! How inhumanly vile.)

Spot on. 😀

Jorpho wrote:

Doesn't Chrome still install its own auto-updater that will merrily update the browser whether you want it or not whenever it happens to feel like it?

There is an option to disable this feature. I have disabled it in the past for troubleshooting purposes.

I prefer to leave the decision to the user as to whether or not he/she wants to use an outdated and insecure browser version. In industry, when a company is developing web-based software, they often run QA tests on numerous obsolete and current browser versions. This is one such benefit of allowing someone to install or download old browser revisions, albeit in the case of Chrome, the users would have had to disable auto-updates. Adobe Flash, for this reason, has the full array of Flash versions available for download and I know people who have to find an old version, install it, locate the bug, and fix it in their software. Some software companies were still testing IE6 as part of their regular test scheme only 3 years ago. In the case of Chrome, if 34.0.1847.137 m is the last revision to function on a PIII, I would make it available so that, in the least, some web software company can use it to track down some bug that their customer may be demanding get fixed.

Here is the portable version of 34.0.1847.137 (from Portable Apps: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/ … af.exe/download

Loads of versions here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableapps/ … ome%20Portable/