I need to test with Chrome 12 (for reasons which are not relevant atm) but I cannot find it anywhere. When I manually go into sf.net and find the right download, the installer complains about not being able to download something.
Please keep old installers in reasonably functioning shape. It is just one of the use cases for portable installations.
As for a short-term workaound: where on the face of this Earth are old Chrome versions kept in the first place? I cannot find them anywhere! Plz help?
The installers are online installers that download Chrome from Google as you install. Google has removed Chrome 12 from their servers as it is unsupported and insecure, so it is no longer available.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
If you can use an older version of regular(non-portable) Google Chrome, there are sites that keep the old releases of programs.
One I know of is filehippo.com (go to the most recent release and on the right of the page should be older versions), and a quick search via google [download old version of google chrome] gives a few more options (oldapps.com looks promising).
You can also try here:
http://www.oldversion.com/windows/google-chrome/
They have up to version 22, although I don't think they are portable versions.
Does anybody know where I can find Chrome version 52.0.2743.82 Stable for download!?
With a little bit of searching, I've found the following:
http://www.filepuma.com/download/google_chrome_32bit_52.0.2743.82-12241/
http://www.filepuma.com/download/google_chrome_64bit_52.0.2743.82-12240/
I've downloaded the installers, and extracted them with 7-Zip. They contain 7z packages of what appears to be full versions of the app.
Although the site looks trustable, you may still want to check the files if they are clean, that's really up to you.