San Francisco - Google officially took its Chrome browser out of its beta testing phase Friday, signaling its ambitions to take on Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Firefox's Mozilla browsers. The internet software giant is already believed to be negotiating with computer makers to have Chrome pre-installed on their machines, giving the Google browser a powerful leg-up in its bid to achieve parity with its more established competitors.
Google only released the beta version of Chrome in September, marking an unusually fast development to official release in a move that marks the strategic value of the browser to the company.
"We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done," said Google in announcing the move. "We are working to add some common browser features such as form autofill and RSS support in the near future. We are also developing an extension platform along with support for Mac and Linux."
Chrome claims 10 million active users worldwide and tabulators have clocked its market share at under 1 per cent. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still dominates the browser wars with about 70 per cent market share, Firefox has around 20 per cent and Apple's Safari has most of the rest.
