Google on Thursday unveiled the latest version of its Chrome browser, moving the product out of beta and promising speed boosts of up to 30 percent. How does it measure up?
If you are already using the beta version of Chrome, the features will be familiar, including the speedier JavaScript performance of the browser's V8 interpreter. Google touts a 30 percent speed increase for Chrome; my testing actually showed a 44 percent improvement.
Chrome 2 completed the well-known SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 1503ms, compared with 2689ms for version 1. This leaves the competition in the dust: Internet Explorer 8 required 9,065ms, while the Firefox 3.1 beta took 3,045ms.
In terms of features, not much has changed since our preview of the Chrome 2 beta. Most notably, you can now remove the thumbnails of your choice from the new tab pages you open. It also includes auto-fill, a full-screen mode, and the ability to drag and drop windows to fit the screen equally.
Google Chrome 2 