Hot on the heels of Opera 10.0 Alpha 1, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta Partner Build, Google has taken its Chrome browser out of Beta stage. Chrome went live into Beta stage at the debut of September 2008, with the Mountain View-based search giant trumpeting plans to “reinvent” the browser. Just three months and a total of 14 releases later, the latest Chrome bits made available for download no longer feature the Beta label. Google indicated that in just the first 100 days on the market Chrome managed to gather up a consistent audience, accounting for an installed base in excess of 10 million users worldwide. In this regard, Google is the undisputed king of the under 1% market share browsers.

“Better stability and performance of plug-ins (particularly video). Video and audio glitches were among the most common bugs fixed during the beta period. If you had problems watching videos with Google Chrome in the past, you should be pleasantly surprised with the performance now,” Sundar Pichai, VP, Product Management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, revealed.

“Even more speed. Google Chrome starts up fast, loads pages quickly, and just keeps getting faster. Since the first beta, the V8 JavaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark — and there is more speed to come.”

Moving out of Beta, Google Chrome comes to the table with evolved bookmark features. The new bookmark manager featured in the Chrome streamlines the process of importing and exporting items, so that users can easily switch from one browser to another. At the same time, they will notice that the management functionality has been kicked up a notch, especially when it comes down to handling large volumes of bookmarks.

On top of this, Google emphasized the security features delivered by Chrome from the get-go, namely the sandbox technology that adds an extra layer designed to mitigate the threat of malicious software, and the Safe Browsing feature capable of fending off phishing and malware attacks.

“We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met, but our work is far from done. We are working to add some common browser features, such as form autofill and RSS support, in the near future. We are also developing an extensions platform along with support for Mac and Linux. If you are already using Google Chrome, the update system ensures that you get the latest bug fixes and security patches, so you will get the newest version automatically in the next few days. If you haven't used Google Chrome for a while, now might be a good time to give it another spin,” Pichai and Upson stated.

Out of Beta within just 100 days since the first development milestone was released, Chrome is in effect representative of Google's ambition to take on Internet Explorer. Fact is that, despite the 10 million strong user base, the Beta label has inherently pushed additional audience away, as it is traditionally associated with software products still under development. Minus the Beta, Chrome delivers a guarantee of stability and performance that will undoubtedly make the browser more attractive, not just to end-users, but also across enterprise IT infrastructures.

Google Chrome is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2 is available for download here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Windows is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Mac OS X is available here.

Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 for Windows is available for download here.

Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 for Linux is available for download here.

Opera 10.0 Alpha 1 for Mac OS X is available for download here.