When Google Chrome first arrived, those who wanted to experience the most up-to-date version downloaded the most recent Chromium snapshot. The open-source builds were always piping-hot and received new features before they arrived in Chrome's Dev channel. Now, however, the tables are turning.

With the arrival of Chrome Canary on Windows, Google began pushing their own open/closed source (ajar source?), bleeding-edge version. New Canary updates still don't arrive as often as Chromium builds, of course -- the buildbot generates as many as one per hour. Interestingly enough, however, Canary currently now sits at a higher version number than Chromium -- 9.0.574.0 to Chromium's 9.0.573.0.

If you're running both browsers side-by-side, you'll also notice some differences on the about:flags page. Chromium is missing both Native Client and speculative pre-rendering -- a new experimental feature in Canary which attempts to speed browsing by predicting which links you're likely to follow and loading pages in the background. The fact that actual features are being bolted on to Canary first is more of an indication of a change in direction than the version number, which Google has asked us to ignore anyway.

The question, then, is whether Chrome is going to go the way of Android. Most Android development happens behind closed doors, with Google choosing to make the source code available when they feel a new release is ready to go. That's a stark contrast to the way Chromium development had been running, but could the fact that Canary is a step ahead indicate that Chrome is moving in the same direction?

We'll have to wait and see, but with Chrome OS devices due out soon, it's certainly a possibility.