Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux Released

When Google released its Chrome Web browser last fall, it came with almost no warning. There were leaks, sure, but even those didn’t surface until mere days before the launch of the first “beta”. Google’s known for a lot of things, and browsers wasn’t one of them, but surprisingly enough, Chrome was good, as I found out, and it was clear that there was a new competitor in the ring. The downside, of course, was that there was no Linux or Mac OS X support.

That changed this week, though, with the first beta releases for both platforms. Chrome on Linux or Mac isn’t that new, per se, as those who’ve dared test the waters have been able to use Chromium nightly builds for a while, but as these are the first official beta releases, it seems like Google’s pleased enough with the stability and feature set. Different teams work on each respective version, but the overall feature set and goals don’t change much.

I admit that I haven’t used Chrome much since its initial beta, but from what I can tell, neither version here is much different than the Windows version. The browser as a whole looks the same, and at least where the Linux version is concerned, there doesn’t look to be any important features lacking. In my quick tests of browsing around the Web, I can honestly say that like the Windows version, Chrome is much snappier than Firefox. Every-single page I went to loaded faster, in some cases, up to 1 – 1.5s faster.

Also new here are “Extensions”, also in beta. These are available for the Windows and Linux versions, but not yet for Mac OS X, due to the fact that it’s not quite “beta-quality” yet. Like extensions for Firefox and other browsers, the extensions for Chrome allow added functionality to a browser that’s for the most part, lacking in it. Let’s just hope that the browser will be able to retain its great page rendering speeds even with various extensions in use.

You can download the betas simply by heading over to the Google Chrome homepage.

We’ve been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it! We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we’ve focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we’re very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there’s hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!