64-Bit Google Chrome Canary Build

The size of the files isn't a factor anymore.
Moreover, you can always assume Win64.

IT's about time to drop Win XP and the majority of Windows 7 and above use 64 Bit.

It's about time to bring Portable Apps forward.

As explained above, it's a performance vs size tradeoff. A 64-bit browser doesn't actually gain you much real world performance at the moment. But it would double the size of Chrome to make it a dual-mode 32-bit + 64-bit app to over 300MB, larger than a LibreOffice English install. And, yes, it must be dual mode. Otherwise, as you move from PC to PC, it's just going to fail on many PCs. Like a Vista machine at your parents. Or the Windows 7 32-bit machine at work, since the company went with 32-bit because of the slightly lower memory requirements.

Remember, this isn't just an app for you to run locally on your own machine. It's an app for all sorts of people to run on all sorts of machines. And, unlike in the Mac world, 32-bit in the Windows world is going to hang on for years still.

As for other sites, you're free to use illegal packages of Chrome from 3rd party sites that use closed source launchers that do things you don't know about. Remember, we cater to folks who want legal, stable, consistent, updateable apps that will continue to work everywhere they do and not suddenly stop working on a bunch of the machines they use. A lot of our users are in poorer areas of the world where people don't have first-class gaming rigs. Abandoning those users isn't something we're keen on.

The Bigger Point: It's Not Ready

When we do a dual mode 32-bit and 64-bit version of Chrome, it will be after it's fully baked and once the size difference means a little less (flash drives, hard drives, cloud storage limits all increase with time). Chrome 64-bit was just released as "stable" in the last week, but Google still isn't pushing it out to users. If you're an existing Windows Chrome user, you're getting automatically updated to the 32-bit version of Chrome 37... you don't even get an option to go 64-bit. If you go to the Chrome download page and click the download button, you get the 32-bit version of Chrome, even if you visit the page using the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer.

Think about that... even Google doesn't feel it's ready for most people yet. This is the same Google that claimed 64-bit Chrome was "faster" when it hit the beta channel in July, when it was actually 9% slower than the 32-bit version. Another reason to take any publishers' claims of "faster" as marketing speak until you prove it. So, quite simply, it's not ready to be pushed to everyone. And Google is well aware of that. So, we have to take that into consideration as well.

Google Chrome Portable "Stable" 64-bit Test Version

If there's enough interest, I can fire up an advanced channel of GoogleChromePortable64 for people to try out. It will have to be an advanced channel as it will fail on XP, Vista, Windows 7/8 32-bit, Wine, etc... meaning it will work on maybe 1/2 of PCs. As an advanced channel, you can manually tick the "Advanced Apps" box in the platform to get it to show up and be installable. And we'll need to include a warning on install as 32-bit launchers can have some issues with 64-bit apps in terms of registry entries and the like going to different virtual hives. Remember, Chrome is a beast in terms of hooks into the local operating system, it is absolutely not designed to be portable, unlike Firefox. So, there will likely be issues with the 64-bit release, at least initially. What say folks?

This is Great!

Thank You.

As stated previously, we currently have no plans to package Canary for portable use. First, Canary is an unstable build of Chrome and likely to have bugs that would mistakenly be reported back to us. Second, the Google Chrome team is uninterested in portable use of their browser (it's designed to prevent it) unlike the Mozilla Firefox team that actively patches bugs that interfere with portable use. As such, it's in our interest to have a Firefox nightly built available to catch bugs but there's no reason to have a Canary build. This is also the reason that Chrome Portable only just barely works and requires you to stay logged into Google to avoid constant data loss while Firefox Portable works flawlessly out of the box. Third, unlike Mozilla Firefox's nightly build, Canary uses a constantly changing download URL as new builds are created. The PortableApps.com Installer does not support such an arrangement at present. One possible way around that would be for the launcher to contain the logic to download the latest build, but the Google Chrome launcher is already our most unwieldy launcher as it is - requiring tons of custom code to shoehorn in portable password abilities and try to counteract some of Chrome's portable-hostile nature.

In short, if the Chrome team were interested in working to ensure portable use - or at the very least stop treating user data as disposable when you move things between PCs - I'd consider it. As it is now, I don't see any value in doing it. It would just be a demand on my time and greatly increase user complaints.

The 64-bit package is stable. It's just called test to distinguish it channel wise. It'll eventually be combined into the main one.

Side note: more than 3% of PCs are 32-bit.