14 DAY TRIAL // Google has always been a big supporter of the web, web apps and the cloud in general. So much so that the download manager in Google Chrome never got much love. In fact, it's essentially uncharged since the day Chrome became available.
And Google doesn't plan to do anything about it either. But third-party developers might, since Google is now working on an API which would allow extensions to offer download manager capabilities.
The downloads API is very much in the early stages, but the first signs of it have landed in Google Chrome 15. That said, it's not ready for every day use and you're not going to find any extensions that make use of it yet.
That said, Chrome developers have published a document explaining their plans for the API as well as describing some of the technical details, of interest to developers.
For now, the API has two stated goals, one is to enable advanced download functionality that extension developers could built upon. Google's example is the classic "download all images on a page" functionality. It may not be that relevant these days as it was several years ago, but it could come in handy occasionally.
The API is also meant to enable developers to completely replace the built-in downloads manager in Chrome. Considering that the default downloads manager is pretty bare bones and that it hasn't gotten much attention, it's a great move.
That said, the Chrome tool is still better Firefox's downloads manager, which hasn't gotten much love either in recent years. One of the biggest complaints, that it uses a dedicated window for the downloads list, for years still hasn't been fixed.
Of course, Firefox solved the problem with an extensions API which enables developers to take over the download management part in Firefox. Google hopes to do the same with its new, experimental downloads API.