Dec 3, 2010 07:52 GMT  ·  By

Google Chrome is now just a release away from catching up with Internet Explorer 9, version-wise. While it took IE 15 years to go from version 1.0 to 9.0, Chrome managed to do so in just a few years.

And fact is that Chrome might just hit 9.0 before the general availability milestone of IE9 which is planned for 2011.

At the start of this month, the Mountain View-based search giant produced a new Stable release of Chrome.

Google Chrome 8.0 Final is now available for download, with work already shifting to the next iteration of the open source browser.

“The Chrome team is happy to announce our latest Stable release, 8.0.552.215. In addition to the over 800 bug fixes and stability improvements, Chrome 8 now contains a built in PDF viewer that is secured in Chrome’s sandbox,” revealed Jason Kersey, from the Google Chrome team.

While Mozilla is decoupling plug-ins from Firefox 4.0, Google has taken the opposite approach, namely to embrace them as close as possible.

The first examples involve Adobe Flash and PDF Viewer which have been integrated closely into the browser, no longer requiring users to download and install the plug-ins manually.

Google turned to sandboxing as a security mitigation designed to ensure that users are protected against attacks targeting vulnerabilities in Chrome (including Flash and PDF flaws), even though the browser’s code might not be exploited.

In addition to releasing Chrome 8.0.552.215 to the Stable Channel, the release was also pushed to the Beta Channel.

However, don’t count for Chrome 8.0.552.215 Beta to be available for very long. Google is already preparing to release Chrome 9.0 to the Beta Channel, a move which should be done any day now.

But for the time being, users running Chrome 7.0 need to upgrade to Chrome 8.0 as soon as possible.

Chrome 8.0 Stable is designed to patch a range of security vulnerabilities impacting previous releases of the open source browser, keeping users safe.

Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here.

Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here.

Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here. Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Beta is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 7 (PP7) is available for download here.