Google Chrome goes gold

Stephen Withers
Friday, 12 December 2008 02:01

Business IT - Open Source

Google's Chrome browser is no longer a beta product, but it is still only available for Windows.

Unless you've been closely following the progress of Google's Chrome web browser since its splashy launch, you may not have realised that there have been 15 releases.

The latest is a real milestone, as Google believes its browser is now ready for prime time and has dropped the beta tag.

A beta period of a little over three months is remarkably short for Google, which is renowned for keeping products in beta for years.

The company claims Chrome has 10 million active users. The latest Net Applications Market Share figures (recorded the day before the latest release of Chrome) give Google's browser a web share of 0.90 percent.

It will be interesting to see how this changes now the product has met Google's performance and stability targets and is out of beta.

Changes made to Chrome since its launch include stability and performance changes regarding plug-ins such as QuickTime, Flash and Silverlight (Google officials say this makes a particular difference to video and audio playback), improved bookmark management, and collecting all the settings that affect the user's privacy into one place.

More speed, and more to come - please read on.