On Tuesday, Google launched the third iteration of its Web browser after just a year on the market. Google is billing Chrome 3.0 as a brand-new release that comes on the heels of 51 developer, 21 beta, and 15 stable updates and 3,505 bug fixes in the past 12 months.
Even though Chrome is no longer in beta, it’s still only available for PCs running Windows. But Google is reporting some major improvements in its first stable release and some ambitious goals for increasing market share.
According to Google, the company has improved JavaScript performance by more than 150 percent since the first beta of Google Chrome, and by more than 25 percent since the most recent stable release.
With Chrome 3.0, Google aims to grab five percent market share by 2010 and 10 percent by 2011. The company has just more than two percent market share today. Google’s gains may come primarily at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer unless it launches Chrome versions for Linux and Mac OS X.
Exploring Google Chrome 3.0
Chrome 3.0 is set to compete with a New Tab page that facilitates one-click browsing. Google said it redesigned the tab page so it’s customizable. For example, with Chrome 3.0, users can rearrange thumbnails of most-visited Web sites by clicking and dragging the mouse. Users can also pin thumbnails to a spot so they don’t disappear even if browsing habits change.
“You can do even more to customize your New Tab page — for example, you can hide parts of the page you don’t want to see, or even opt for a simple list view of all your most visited Web sites. In addition, we’ve added handy tips to the bottom of the New Tab page to help you get the most out of Google Chrome,” said Chrome program…