How to install all versions (stable/beta/unstable) of Google Chrome side by side without conflicts?

In case anyone else comes across this question - it seems that the Chrome package maintainers have removed the conflict in the 3 published packages - google-chrome-stable / -beta / -unstable. These each install into different directories and via /etc/alternatives, /usr/bin/google-chrome is soft-linked to a particular version (google-chrome-stable by default).

Tested on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS w/ Chrome 38 (stable) 39 (beta) and 40 (unstable).

There are Chromium binaries available that do not pollute inside /bin, but can run directly from any folder.

You can download the binaries from here and extract them to any folder of your choice, and run them side by side.

You can't do that. This is because all these versions (stable,beta and unstable) conflits with each other. See:

apt-cache show google-chrome-beta | grep Conflict
Conflicts: google-chrome

Now, google-chrome is a general name for Linux distros:

which google-chrome
/usr/bin/google-chrome

I have google-chrome-beta installed on my system:

dpkg -l | grep google
ii  google-chrome-beta                     22.0.1229.91-r158759                    

dpkg -S /usr/bin/google-chrome
google-chrome-beta: /usr/bin/google-chrome

As you can see google-chrome binary is provided by google-chrome-beta on my system. If I install stable, then it will be provided by stable. So, they conflict with each other.

If you try to install google-chrome-beta via .deb package distributed from Google you can see the same effect:

sudo LC_ALL=C dpkg --simulate -i google-chrome-beta_current_i386.deb
Selecting previously unselected package google-chrome-beta.
dpkg: regarding google-chrome-beta_current_i386.deb containing google-chrome-beta:
 google-chrome-beta conflicts with google-chrome
  google-chrome-stable provides google-chrome and is present and installed.
dpkg: error processing google-chrome-beta_current_i386.deb (--install):
 conflicting packages - not installing google-chrome-beta
Errors were encountered while processing:
 google-chrome-beta_current_i386.deb

I have changed google-chrome-stable with beta and tried to install via .deb package.

But I am not sure what happens if you can get (?) chrome source code and compile it, then try to run it via this compiled binary. Maybe this could work for Chromium. Since you can download its source code.

This is possible, but you'll probably have to download the package apt-get download google-chrome-beta

Then you'll have to extract the package files: dpkg -X google-chrome-beta-xyzabc.deb dir/

From here you can probably run the program fine, but if not, then you'll have to fiddle around with the control files and work out what the install package is doing and where it puts things and edit it so there are no more conflicts.

This is where you're going to need to spend a lot of time reading about .deb files and you'll be wanting to test things in a virtual machine so you don't mess up your install.