Chrome bloat brainstorm
groups.google.com
groups.google.com
"Many reasons, but two off the top of my head: 1. We do distribution deals with Chrome, where we bundle Chrome with other products. These get difficult when our binary grows. 2. We see increased download failures / install dropoffs as the binary grows, especially in countries with poor bandwidth like India. India also happens to be a very good market for Chrome (we have good market share there and growing), so that's also very problematic."
Also as a "haha, crappy bandwith!" aside: I found it strange to think of most people only having -700kbps in the states. I have a 100mbps line for 50USD/month and regularly get around 60mbps. I have to install chrome on various computers for work, and I've never even noticed more than a few second delay between downloading the binaries and installation.
1. Many people, even in the States, have sloooow connections at home. 2. Many people have very poor cell/GSM/GPRS coverage. We still have to provide a POTS modem for our handheld data collection devices[1].
[1] We just released a new device (smartphone) that supports a POTS modem. Think of that! A cellphone that transfers data via a dial up modem.
P.S. Mapping software is by nature huge. It typically contains, you know, maps. Of the whole country.
Better would be to allow you to download which maps you need as you need them, to shrink the initial installer down. Better than that would be having the maps be online accessible, and are immediately cached to the device after first use. Best is probably somewhere between those two, or something along those lines, but I can't imagine who packaged up a 4.2Gb iphone app and didn't ask any questions about that.
And, uh, it happened twice... Finally, at my third attempt I was able to download the whole thing after deactivating automatically sleep mode. As soon as it finished, an error was shown and so the file was lost again.
True story.
* Flash Player 2 (1997) = 0.2 MB
* Flash Player 3 (1998) = 0.2 MB
* Flash Player 4 (1999) = 0.3 MB
* Flash Player 5 (2000) = 0.3 MB
* Flash Player 6 (2002) = 0.5 MB
* Flash Player 7 (2003) = 0.6 MB
* Flash Player 8 (2005) = 0.8 MB
* Flash Player 9 (2006) = 1.5 MB
* Flash Player 10 (2008) = 1.9 MB
* Flash Player 10.1 (2010) = 2.7 MB
* Flash Player 10.2 (2011) = 2.7 MB