Mozilla undoubtedly stole the show this week as far as the open source community and users of open source browsers are concerned, with the release of Firefox 3.6. On the same day when the minor update to Firefox 3.5 became available for the general public, Google kicked up a notch its own breed of open source browser. Early adopters that are following the development process of Google Chrome will be able to start test-driving a new Beta release, Build 4.0.249.78. However, this is only valid for testers running on Windows, as Mac OS X and Linux users did not get an update of Chrome Beta.

“The Beta channel has been updated to 4.0.249.78 for Windows. This release contains the following changes: updated UI translations; a crash which occurred, on Windows XP, when the translation extension was installed. More details about additional changes are available in the svn log of all revisions,” revealed Anthony Laforge, Google Chrome program manager.

4.0.249.78 is the second update to be released on the Google Chrome Beta channel this year. In the first half of January, the Mountain View-based search giant offered testers running the open source browser on Windows Build 4.0.249.64. At that time, the Beta update was designed to expand the functionality of extensions, like the addition of internationalization support, on top of fixing a few bugs.

Still, considering the pace at which Google has swapped major versions of Chrome since launch, the Mountain View company is bound to close in on the date when it unveils a new stable release for its browser. Next in line is, of course, Google Chrome 4.0, after version 3.0 graduated to the Stable channel in 2009. In this regard, Mozilla is moving a tad slowly, with over half a year necessary for Firefox to evolve from 3.5 to 3.6.

The latest release of Google Chrome is available for download here.

Firefox 3.6 Final for Windows is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Final for Mac OS X is available for download here.
Firefox 3.6 Final for Linux is available for download here.

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