Installing Google Chrome Machine-Wide

Perhaps the most brilliant and subversive feature of the Google Chrome browser is its distribution model. It has a one-click installer that will work for a limited rights user account. The way Google pulls this off is that they install Chrome into the %LOCALAPPDATA% directory for the current user rather than the secured %ProgramFiles% or %ProgramFiles(x86)% directory. What this means is that many corporate people that cannot run the Firefox installer or get Firefox to work without serious rigmarole can install Google Chrome easily. I have seen this take off in corporate offices by word of mouth.

What I want to do is run the release version of Google Chrome in Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 and use the application publishing feature while I run the beta channel Google Chrome on my host Windows 7 machine. The problem is that in order for the virtual application publishing to work properly Google Chrome needs to be installed for all users.

I could do this by installing Chrome and then manually moving things around, edit the registry and create an All Users shortcut. Or I just discovered the Google tool to install Chrome for an entire machine.

If you use the Google Pack, you can install  Chrome Pack machine-wide. Get the pack from http://pack.google.com.

Go, fight, win!