Google Chrome now Ready for Business with Version 15? No!

We still do testing and cannot say for sure, therefore the title is still in question.

UPDATE:

With version 15 Google seems to have published the very first version of Google Chrome for Business that seems to work in an Enterprise environment with Roaming Profiles and redirected AppData folders. Yes - You have read correctly - they are at version 15 and this is the first version that may work. They claimed in december 2010 with Version 11 that Chrome is Ready for Business. The only thing that was ready - was a very limiting MSI wrapper that is not a full-fledged MSI setup. These version 11 was not ready for Business and the only important functionality was the installation to %ProgramFiles% folder, but this does not make Chrome ready. It's still only a suxxx MSI wrapper around the normal installer and as one example - it does not allow you to customize the icon folders.

Some Google Developers seems also not aware of the best practice rules for roaming profiles and have not understood some fundamental Windows basics and still do per user installations of Google Chrome into LocalAppData. From my point of view and with more than 15 years experience in Roaming Profiles, many broken applications appeared after Google started to do this bullsh** and some braindead guys may think - what Google does - cannot be wrong. I have no words for them except - GOOGLE DEVELOPERS ARE WRONG!

What is the best practice and minimal policy configuration required to run Google Chrome?

Google has provided some policies for Chrome that need to be enabled with roaming profiles. If you don't enable the user data directory redirection - your users will loose all their Chrome settings data/bookmarks/plugins with every logoff! The Google developers still do not have fixed their application bugs in version 15 and still default the user data directory to the local application data folder (BUG). Please understand that these are only workarounds provided by Google. These are not fixing the design flaws that the user data should reside below AppData\Roaming folder by default.

  • Download the latest policy templates for Google Chrome.
  • Copy the ADMX templates to \\[adsrv1]\sysvol\[example.com]\Policies\PolicyDefinitions.
  • Create a per User GPO with the following settings

    • Set disk cache directory ${local_app_data}\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
      • ​With this setting we tell Google Chrome to save all temporary files to local disk. The user benefit from faster page loading and caching as long as he do not logoff. If the user logs off all this data gets excluded from roaming and is deleted from disk for cleanup reasons. These data get's intentionally lost on logoff.
    • Set user data directory ${roaming_app_data}\Google\Chrome\User Data
      • ​This is the most important policy at all. This keeps all user settings inside AppData\Roaming folder. If you are using redirected AppData\Roaming folders or not, this should be the default for Chrome in all cases.
      • The default behaviour is a major design BUG in Google Chrome, but the policy can workaround the bug.
      • Only make sure your Chrome is deployed in the same version on every computer. Google says it could destroy the user data if not.

Looking forward to see some bugs closed:

  • Issue 2423: Windows Roaming Profile support, opened Sep 17, 2008
  • Issue 68519: Change MSI from a wrapper to "full" MSI
  • Google AdWords Editor has the same bugs (NOT FIXED)

History

  • 15/05/2012: Issues should be fixed in v20. One remaining issue with concurrent browser sessions is not fixed.
  • 04/01/2012: Postponed from v17 to v20 after several milestone changes in past months.
  • 11/01/2011: Addons are broken. Cannot installed as user data directory is on UNC path
  • 10/28/2011: Chrome start up, basic functionality seems working, furter testing required

 

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