Google Chrome Officially Out Of Beta

In what has to be record time for a Google product, it has been announced that Google Chrome is officially out of beta. I updated Chrome and have noticed a speedup in Gmail and other javascript intensive web applications, nothing huge but enough for me to notice. They also said that they fixed a lot of issues with video playback, although I can't say that has ever been a big deal for me personally. I have been using Chrome since release as my main web browser and haven't had any issues with video playback.

One thing that they keep saying they will support is extensions, and the sooner the better in my opinion. From my point of view this should be their number one priority, as a lack of extensions is what is keeping a lot of Firefox users from switching over. Overall, this is a very solid release and it was amazing to see Google take a product from beta to production this quickly. 

It seems clear to me that Google really does want to make the operating system increasingly irrelevant. With the recent announcement of Native Client and now taking Chrome out of beta I think that is obvious. I definitely foresee a day within the next 10 years when you will be able to hop from computer to computer and regardless of the base operating system have an extremely similar interface, with all your files accessible and ready to use. That is not good for Microsoft, because once that becomes feasible the OS is no longer going to be a cash cow. Microsoft might just have to innovate in a huge way... imagine that.