Slightly a year after Chrome's first birthday, the folks at Google released the third version on the stable channel, meaning the normal mortals can now enjoy an array of new features from the search giant.

Google's entrance in the browser market hasn't gone unnoticed. As a second strong backer of the WebKit project originally created by Apple, the project behind Chrome and Safari's rendering engine has been the star of late. Featuring the latest HTML5 additions as well as being the only open-source alternative (and possible best technology) out there for embedded and desktop markets. But what is most important is that Google unleashed Chrome as a JavaScript devouring beast, and ever since many JavaScript benchmarks were created to indicate performance supremacy, not only with Chrome's V8, but also Safari's Nitro and Firefox' TraceMonkey.

With the third release Google made Chrome more mature. Although from the start you should be aware that while extensions are still not supported, they are working hard on it, in fact it's enabled by default in the development channel for Chrome 4. So what's new in this release? Well, JavaScript performance is still important and therefor V8 is simply even faster than ever, both in V8's benchmark suite as well as SunSpider. A new tab page was introduced that allows more customization. The Omnibox now displays icons in front of results, making it easier to identify if a found item is a Google search, history and bookmarks. The <video> tag has been introduced in Chrome as well, following Firefox 3.5 it allows support for embedded video on web pages without the need for plug-ins (do note that Chrome supports Theora encoding like Firefox, and the not-so-free H.264). And last but not least, Chrome now support basic themes, which should be a good competitor to Firefox' persona's (but not the full fledged themes).

All in all Chrome 3 is surely a solid and polished release of which many Chrome fans will be fond of. With even more speed with rendering pages and executing web sites, and excellent UI responsiveness (partially due to the multi-process architecture), continued stability and security track record it is a strong competitor in the market. Surely Chrome can handle Safari on Windows, and Opera (which has a smaller presence on the market). Competition with Firefox will remain difficult without extensions and stable cross platform releases.