A net installer is downloaded to your system when you hit the download Chrome button on the official Google Chrome download page.

A net installer, as the name implies, requires a network connection during setup as it needs to contact Google servers to download the browser's components for installation.

The installers provide advantages to both the user and Google but also some disadvantages. On the positive side, whenever you run the installer, the latest version of Google Chrome gets downloaded and installed.

Offline or full Chrome installers are linked to a specific version which may be outdated. While that is not the end of the world thanks to Chrome's automatic updating system, it still means that you will have to check for updates on first launch to make sure the latest version is installed.

Google benefits from net installers as well as it gets more data about the installation process. The installer requires an Internet connection and Google gets data during installation such as the date of installation, information about the system or if the installation fails.

Downsides to net installers are that you cannot install them on offline machines, that you may run into issues installing them on devices with slow Internet connections, and that net installers are not ideal if you want to install the browser on multiple machines as you would download it for each device individually instead of just once.

Google Chrome offline installers

Google does not link to full installers on the official download page of the Chrome web browser. but it highlights how you can download an offline installer for Windows on this Support page.

Use the following links to download full versions of the Chrome web browser to your computer system.


As you can see when you look at the links, it is important to pass the parameter standalone with the value 1, and the channel if you want to download Beta, Dev or Canary versions of Google Chrome.

Img

A click on the download button downloads the full version of the selected Chrome edition to your system. The file has a size of nearly 50 Megabytes and highlights that it is the full version of Chrome in its name as well.

The installer does not require an Internet connection during setup so that you may install it without having to worry about being connected to the Internet and about the stability of the Internet connection.

Note: A 32-bit version of Chrome is not offered anymore by Google. Some sites link to 32-bit download pages but the downloads redirect to the 64-bit Chrome installation file instead.

Closing Words

Google does not link to the full Chrome installer on the official download page and many users probably don't know even that an offline installer is available as well.