Early bird prices are coming to an end soon... ⏰ Grab your tickets before January 17

This article was published on February 4, 2013

Weird. At the moment, no one can download and install Google Chrome from the official site. (Update: Fixed)


Weird. At the moment, no one can download and install Google Chrome from the official site. (Update: Fixed)

Screen Shot 2013-02-04 at 2.50.22 PM

I just spent the last thirty minutes of my life attempting to install Google Chrome on a friend’s Mac; the download button on Chrome’s official homepage just won’t work. Of course, I assumed it was the computer’s fault. I tried everything to establish why it just wouldn’t let me download it. After countless restarts, permission fixes and other hacks – I gave up.

But, just to make absolutely sure, I then tried to re-install Chrome on my own computer, you know, just to make sure it was actually a computer issue. Well whadya know, it wasn’t. If you visit Google Chrome’s website now, on PC or Mac, you won’t be able to install Google Chrome. Our entire team have tried it to no avail.

Try it yourself.

A cock up worth addressing? I’d say so. No doubt some commenters will feel differently…

I pinged a couple of JS wizards to find out what the problem could be, turns out that there’s a JS error on line 580, “chrm.download is undefined” and so the download just won’t work. Makes me feel a whole lot better about the little mistakes we’ve made, assuming it is a mistake that is.

If you’re desperate to get your hands on a copy of Chrome, visit Download.com for now.

We’ve contacted Google for comment.

Update at 11:10AM EST: Google has fixed the issue. Everyone should be able to download Chrome again.

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with