Chrome to be Sony's default browser, also gets Snow Leopard update

Jake Widman
Wednesday, 02 September 2009 01:34

IT Industry - Strategy

Sony has announced that its U.S. line of Vaio computers have Google's Chrome installed as their default browser. Meanwhile, the Mac version of Chrome inches closer to being ready for public consumption with the release of a Snow Leopard-compatible update.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, Vaio PCs sold in the U.S. now come with both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer installed, with Chrome the default.

The paper quotes a Sony spokesperson as saying that there are no plans to do the same for computers sold outside the U.S.

For its part, Google said the deal with Sony was a test of "ways to make Chrome accessible to even more people," implying that the company was open to similar deals with other vendors.

Neither Sony nor Google discussed the terms or conditions of the deal.

On the Mac side, which still has not seen even a public beta of the new browser, the developer version was just updated to provide "some improved compatibility with Snow Leopard."

A post on the Google Chrome Releases blog runs down the changes in the new version, which -- besides addressing Snow Leopard -- fixes a few bugs and improves aspects of the interface.