With Google Chrome being used by hundreds and hundreds of people around the world, it is becoming so popular that it’s winning everyone’s hearts by releasing every possible feature it can add to its newer versions. It has almost all the features needed to become the world’s most preferred browser. I am sure many of you reading this article are also fans of Google Chrome browser. We all love it and try to install its latest version as fast as possible but there’s one bad point when it comes to downloading it. Google Chrome’s official website makes us download Google Updater, which is essentially a download manager for Google Chrome. This Google Updater automatically updates Chrome, stays on all the time, and often wastes bandwidth/computer resources. This is a problem to those who are limited in bandwidth (and/or computer resources) as their precious usage gets wasted due to these download managers.

So, if you are one of those people that want Google Chrome but don’t want Google Updater, there’s a trick through which you can get Chrome via the “standalone installer” without the need to download the Google Updater software.

The trick is very simple. Typically when you want to download Chrome, you would go to http://www.google.com/chrome and click on the big blue button that says “Download Google Chrome”. This would then take you to http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html from where you would have to accept Google’s EULA. Once you accept Google’s EULA, Google Updater starts to download. The trick to avoiding Google Updater is to add ?standalone=1 to the URL address. In other words, instead of going to http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html, you should go to http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?standalone=1. At the new URL, after you accept the EULA Chrome’s standalone installer will being. In other words, no Google Updater! The standalone installer is 20-25 MB in size (the final size changes as Google modifies Chrome; it is 22.6 MB at the time of this writing). Once the installer downloads, simply install Chrome like it is any other program.

Editor’s Edit: It should be noted by not using Google Updater, you won’t be able to regularly update Google Chrome via their options/about menu. You will need to download the standalone installer every time you want to update. Thanks Jyo for bringing up this point!

Now you can enjoy Chrome, without the Google Updater annoyance! Yaaaa hooooooooooooo… (no pun intended).

This is a Community Content article. It has been contributed to dotTech by Mayank. Contribute your own article to dotTech by clicking here.