Chrome 4 opens the door to third-party extensions

Google Chrome 4.0 went from beta to stable yesterday, bringing its support for extension (aka add-on) into the mainstream. As of now, there are more than 1,500 extensions available for power Windows users to add new capabilities to their browser. This is an important capability, and one of the key reasons why Mozilla Firefox attained its market share behind Internet Explorer.

I was surprised by the sheer breadth of the extensions available when I recently switched from Firefox to the then beta of Chrome 4. Even putting aside its unmatched JavaScript performance, Chrome is acknowledged as one of the fastest browsers around in terms of webpage rendering and general responsiveness.

In addition, the latest stable iteration of Google Chrome comes with 1,500 new features compared to the previous version. Bookmark sync with other Chrome browsers is now built-in, as well as a number of APIs and support relating to HTML5 and WebSockets, among other web standards.

Existing users should find themselves upgraded over the week, though they can also check for updates manually. In the meantime, new users can also download Google Chrome here. Unfortunately for Mac OS X and Linux users though, the stable release is only available for Windows--for now.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at Google Chrome Blog 

Related Articles:
Google's Chrome defies hackers
No rush to move Chrome in the enterprise
Google Chrome is now No. 3