Thanks to a full year of great feedback from our users, we're kicking off our second year of Google Chrome with a brand new stable release. This stable release incorporates many of the improvements and features that we tested out in our most recent beta release, including a 150% increase in Javascript performance since our very first beta, a freshly redesigned New Tab page, an improved Omnibox, Themes capability, as well as HTML5 features. You can get the full, play-by-play details on the Official Google Blog.
If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, we invite you to give it a whirl. Many of the improvements in this release were inspired by the responses from users, so we're all ears if you have any feedback. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated to this new version soon, but if you're itching to try this right away, download the latest version at google.com/chrome.
A lot has happened for Google Chrome since the day we prematurely shipped our comic book, announced Google Chrome just a day before we initially intended, and pushed our browser out of the nest and into Beta. To take stock of this past year, we thought we'd celebrate with a birthday cake, birthday balloons, and a few interesting factoids. Since September 2, 2008, there have been:
More importantly, we've improved by over 150% on Javascript performance since our initial beta:
We've also added some of the most commonly requested features -- including form autofill, side-by-side view, the ability to remove items from the New Tab page, and full screen mode (just hit F11!) -- and even a bit of magic to make the entire web three-dimensional (okay, that was just a joke).
There's still plenty for us to do. Extensions for Google Chrome are well underway. We're also hard at work on Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, which are making rapid progress on the developer channel. Our Mac and Linux versions are missing a few key features (such as printing), so we're keeping them in the developer channel a little while longer to make sure that they provide a satisfying native experience on these platforms and meet our standards for stability and performance. If you like living on the cutting edge and don't mind the work in progress, you can download Google Chrome for Mac and Linux today through the developer channel.
Before we blow out the candles on Google Chrome's first birthday, we'd like to send a huge thank you to all our users who browse the web with Google Chrome, provide great feedback, and shared your all-round awesomeness with us. The second year of Google Chrome's life is shaping up to be a pretty exciting one, and we look forward to an action-packed year for the browser and the web. Stay tuned.