They may well be right, but boy does it /feel/ wrong.
What if it sucks down bandwidth when I'm on 3G? What if an update breaks something, and I'm in the middle of something that can't be updated? What if an update silently breaks the update process? Hrm!
I reference that in your mention of 3G bandwidth usage. Chrome updates should be fairly tiny and bandwidth-friendly. Not always, but more often than not.. Especially on a beta/dev channel.
It's like you've never actually experienced the autoupdater and are only responding to a rough description of the process. It's a HUGE win.
> What if it sucks down bandwidth when I'm on 3G?
That might happen. What if it does?
> What if an update breaks something, and I'm in the middle
> of something that can't be updated?
As per TFA (and experience): The autoupdater never interrupts you. The only UI change is one of the toolbar buttons changes subtly. Most of the time you don't notice that an update is ready to install. More to the point, after the update you usually don't even notice anything different.
> What if an update silently breaks the update process?
There's absolutely no precedent for this, but honestly, who cares? This is hardly reason to shun the entire system.
Bottom line: The autoupdater makes sure I never care about the version of Chrome I'm running, just like a web app.
Then it risks costing me money, for doing something I've not chosen to do. For a feature described as "not worrying", that can be potentially very worrying.
Do you choose what version of a web site you use? Generally no. You trust that whoever is running it cares enough to not break it for you, just like Chrome users trust Google to not break their web browser.
Exactly. I can only buy this line of thinking if you're in charge of mission critical machines (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).
For the vast majority of people, heading down this rabbit hole isn't worth the effort.
(On the flip-side, it would be nice if there was a magical "undo those updates to point in time X" feature in case something went wrong and you wanted to see if it was because of an update).
You have chosen to, by installing Chrome. Install Chromium if you don't want automatic updates. It's a pain though, Chrome's auto-updates are first class.
If you're in the middle of something, it isn't a problem. It doesn't update until you close the browser and open it again.
It's also really unlikely to break anything you might be doing from one version to the next, unless you're doing really experimental cutting-edge things... And then you probably want the update anyhow.
> What if an update silently breaks the update process? Hrm!
This is part of why Chrome uses a separate application (Google Updater) to do the updating. Even in the worst-case scenario where we update to a version of Chrome that can't even start, the updater still runs and can later update to a fixed version.
Sorry for slow response. I sure wish HN would mail me when people comment.
Sure, the updater can break itself. But in practice, you rarely update the updater because the majority of the features you might want to update are in the app, not the updater.
So you update the updater very rarely and cautiously, and you update the app quickly and fearlessly. It's not 100% foolproof, but it's a lot better than the alternative: Any crash bug anywhere in the application having the capacity to disable updates.
Chrome saves a copy of the last version, so if an update breaks something there is something to easily rollback to, even without network access. The updates are also impressively small, thanks to Courgette.
The 3G will cost you a few extra bucks. Can't live with that? Maybe you should try Internet Explorer, I've heard they're not planning to include such a feature anytime soon... :)
What if it sucks down bandwidth when I'm on 3G? What if an update breaks something, and I'm in the middle of something that can't be updated? What if an update silently breaks the update process? Hrm!