Mac and Linux get Google Chrome

26 May 2010

Google has officially released Chrome for the Apple and Linux operating systems, taking the software out of beta.

The new browser's JavaScript performance has been greatly improved, the company said, and is up 213 per cent and 305 per cent on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks.

Chrome supports some HTML5 functions, such as geo-location APIs, App Cache, web sockets and file drag-and-drop.

New code will provide synchronisation of bookmarks and browser preferences across multiple computers, and an improved extension manager allows work to continue in incognito mode.

"We are particularly excited to bring Chrome for Mac and Linux out of beta, and introduce Chrome's first stable release for Mac and Linux users," said Google in a blog post.

"You can read more about the Mac and Linux stable releases on the Google Mac and Chromium blogs respectively."

Support for Adobe Flash 10.1 is currently being finalised, and will be delivered automatically, the company said.

Chrome has enjoyed a steadily increasing market share since launch, and is now the third most popular browser on the internet.

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