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Whenever I was installing Google Chrome for development purposes, it stuffed all kinds of weird stuff in my services and startup items. This is really annoying and distracting for me as well. I only need Chrome once in a long while and I don't need Google Chrome account or any sneaky "update" services.

Is there an official clean install, something like zip archive?

Requirements:

  • Web browser based on Google Chrome
  • No update system
  • No startup items
  • No Windows services
  • Released by Google
  • Can be used directly without compiling
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  • I’d say this question is off-topic here (related discussion on Meta: Is asking for the canonical location of source code on-topic?), unless you are looking for an alternative to Google Chrome (e.g., another browser based on Chromium). – unor Oct 29 '15 at 16:58
  • @unor Eh, can you please quote line from my post that has source-code in it? I would be really glad if you could do that for me. – Tomáš Zato - Reinstate Monica Oct 29 '15 at 17:09
  • That’s why I said "related". To us, conceptually, there isn’t really a difference between source code (e.g., a script) and compiled code (e.g., an EXE file). Do you think they should be handled differently? – unor Oct 29 '15 at 17:42
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    @NicolasRaoul Then I doubt there is any solution here. Google would have no reason to release such a version. But if Portable is reputable and reasonably verifiable, I don't know what the problem with using it would be. – user3169 Oct 30 '15 at 17:21
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    @user3169: Feel free to post that as an answer. Lack of currently existing software solutions is not a valid reason for closing. Cheers! – Nicolas Raoul♦ Nov 2 '15 at 1:36
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  1. Go to https://www.virtualbox.org/ and install Virtual Box
  2. Go to https://dev.modern.ie/ and download one or more of the Windows+IE images &/or pick and download one or more Linux Distibutions
  3. Install your selected OS within Virtual Box
  4. Snapshot
  5. In your VM go to https://www.google.com/chrome/ & install Chrome & optionally take another Snapshot
  6. Do your tests, (potentially while not connected to the internet
  7. Next time you need to do tests start from one of the snapshots

This has several advantages:

  • Your OS will be unaffected by installing Chrome
  • No start-up changes to your system
  • Nothing to compile
  • Uses official distribution of Chrome as released by Google
  • You can test under various OS editions
  • Free/Gratis
  • Windows or Linux
  • You have a reproducible test set-up
  • You can use a similar set-up for testing on other browsers
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