Google Chrome takes up 4.3G of space?!?

Was just cleaning Linda's MacBook as it had run out of disk space and was hardly functioning. While doing so, I found something that completely shocked me. Google Chrome was taking up 4.3G of space - more than 50% of the storage taken by all applications on the computer!

So why does Chrome need so much space? Well it turns out that it apparently never deletes a previous version when it upgrades - wasting your hard drive space for no useful purpose I can see. This is simply sloppy Google! On Linda's computer there are no less than 47 Versions of Chrome (ranging from build 6.0.472.41 to 13.0.782.99) currently stored - each one taking up between 80-112M!

This is enough to make me consider removing Chrome from my computers.

For now, I'm just deleting the previous versions. For those of you who aren't familiar with the command line, here's a simple recipe:

• make sure Chrome is closed
• use Finder to open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal
• in terminal type

$ cd /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/Versions

$ ls -l

• then read the output and find the highest number (e.g. 13.0.782.109)
• in terminal type

$ mv 13.0.782.109 ..

$ rm *

$ mv ../13.0.782.109 .

• replacing my example number with your highest number
• type

$ exit

• and close the Terminal program. You should be all set to restart Chrome.

Having said this, I take no responsibility should you come to harm by following the above. This post is for informational purposes only and implies no guarantee of positive results, your milage may vary.