At 6:28 PM PT on Wednesday, Google issued Chrome dev-channel version 3.0.187.0. Just over an hour later (7:31 PM) the update to Chrome users was halted — due to a serious crash condition that made the browser difficult to use.
“The crash is http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=13759,” Google’s Mark Larson wrote in responce to Chrome user complaints about 3.0.187.0. “
I’m stopping the update of this build. Apologies to those who’ve already got the update.
We’ll push a fix as soon as we can tomorrow.”
As a Chrome dev-channel user myself, I did not get the update prior to it being halted by Google – but the comment on the release page speak volumes. The simple act of checking menus and version number (which is something that is a common activity) triggers the crash.
Crashing this version version of Chrome should not be a terrible surprise — after all Google does name it the dev-channel version. Google has three versions of Chrome dev, beta and stable.
Aside for the crash condition, the 3.0.187.0 release (when updated will it be 3.0.187.1?) is interesting in that it is an update for Windows, Mac and LInux. This is the first simultaneous release of Chrome for all three platforms ever.
Google just started making public builds for Mac and Linux last week.
The ironic thing, from my point of view is that the 3.0.187.0 release itself was supposed to be a big update for crash conditions. The release notes indicate at least 17 different fixes for crash conditions fixed in this version.
But apparently it was the one they missed that halted this release.
**UPDATE**
Google has now issued an update -now called 3.0.187.1
