“Google Chrome for Mac is in development and a team of engineers is working hard to bring it to you as soon as possible,” the Google team has confirmed. Not only that, but Chrome for Mac will be even “faster” and “more robust” than the currently-available (Windows) version, according to Google's VP of Product Management.

“This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done,” said VP Product Management, Sundar Pichai, and Engineering Director, Linus Upson, on the Official Google Blog. “We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.”

We reckon it will be faster and more robust, given that Chrome is based on several open source projects, borrowing core elements from Apple's own WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox. Google also claims that, in what is a natural approach, it is making all of its code open source as well. “We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward,” Google's Upson added.

WebKit is an open source web browser engine, but it is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and other Mac OS X programs.

Google's VP of Product Management claims their goal with Chrome is to “add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.” To do that, Chrome must be capable of features like desktop shortcuts that launch your favorite web applications, suggestions for both search and web pages, dynamic tabs, and more. And it is.

Using a “regular work machine” with multiple processes and apps running in the background, Veteran Mac expert Joe Kissell has conducted a few tests to compare Chrome to Apple's Safari. Since Chrome is currently available only for Windows users, a virtual machine also had to be fired up, further damping the MacBook Pro's processor and RAM. In the tests “representative of the 'real world' in which many are likely to use the browser,” Cult of Mac revealed the following results:

-- Chrome launched in < 2 seconds in XP under VMware Fusion while Safari launched in ~9 seconds. Pages loaded in 7.254 seconds in Chrome and in 9.531 seconds in Safari.

-- The “How To Create Css Test” page (which drastically affects load times in browsers that use progressive rendering) rendered in 162 ms in Chrome, and in 37 ms in Apple's Safari.

Be sure to stick around, as we will be making Chrome for Mac available for download the instant it comes out.