ReadWriteWeb

Yesterday, Google announced a new beta version of Chrome, which features a significantly faster version of V8, Google's JavaScript engine. Today, Google also launched Chrome Experiments, which showcases JavaScript intensive games, apps, and visualizations. The site is obviously meant to highlight the power of the combination of V8 and Chrome, though quite a few of the apps should also work on Firefox, Safari and IE. In our tests, however, Chrome did indeed provide the best experience.

Apple today released the first public beta of Safari 4, which sports a redesigned interface that resembles Google's Chrome, as well as support for all of the major Internet standards, and a large range of new and enhanced features. Among these new features are a reimagined start page with a speed-dial interface similar to what Opera and Chrome are currently offering, a Cover Flow-like interface for browsing your bookmarks and history, and the ability to perform a full-text history search of your bookmarks.

The Google Chrome team keeps releasing updates to Google's browser on an almost weekly basis, but it is interesting that the latest version in the developer channel is now already being called 2.0. This comes just about four months after Google first released its browser to the public. This new version (2.0.156.1) is only available in the developer channel, but it already points at where Google is planning to go with this next version of Chrome, which, besides many new features, also includes a new version of WebKit and Google's own implementation of the HTTP protocol.

Since its launch, Google's new web browser, Google Chrome, has been applauded for its lightweight look and feel and for the speed of its JavaScript engine. Although the browser still lacks support for things like RSS and browser add-ons, the company has already ripped off the beta label, a move that was probably made in preparation for Google's upcoming bundling deals with PC manufacturers.

When Google released its browser called Chrome this fall, there was an unusually loud controversy about its End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). The company responded quickly to those complaints.

Now the contract with users has been changed again, with a number of sections deleted since yesterday. Chrome's market share is already significant and the company is taking big steps to expand it further - that makes some of these new changes all the more interesting.

After only 100 days and fifteen updates, Google has taken the "beta" label off Chrome, its WebKit based browser. Given that the company has a penchant for keeping products like Gmail or Google Docs in perpetual beta, it comes as a bit of a surprise that Google already considers Chrome to be a 1.0 product.

Since the first beta release, Google has focused on fixing stability issues (especially with regards to playing Flash video), sped up the already fast V8 JavaScript engine, and added a better bookmark manager and privacy controls.

We've been tipped off that Google has been releasing nightly builds of their new Google Chrome browser like crazy. It's been reported that up to 10 nightly builds a day are being released for Chrome. That's a lot of updates to keep up with and we have to admit we're surprised at the pace in which Google is releasing these builds. However, the builds do not come with automatic updates or notifications for new build releases. A developer has taken the time to throw together a simple and efficient solution.