Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) rolled Chrome 12 onto the stable channel on Tuesday as part of its six-week release cycle, in effect pushing it out to Chrome users around the world. The new version of Chrome patches 15 security vulnerabilities. Google reportedly paid out nearly $10,000 to outside researchers for their part in discovering and reporting them.

In addition, Google has also improved on the browser's Safe Browsing malware detection functionality. This feature checks against a database of known malicious sites maintained by Google to preempt users from visiting them, and has been expanded to warn users of potentially dangerous files. Detection of a red-flagged file will generate a warning that reads: "This file is malicious. Are you sure you want to continue?" It should be noted that the feature is only available for the Windows version of Chrome at the moment.

Another new feature is the ability to delete Flash cookies, which is known to be abused by some websites to track users. They can now be cleared together with the browser cache and ordinary cookie files. It's a feature that will probably make its way to other browsers soon. Chrome is merely the first to take advantage of new APIs released by Adobe that enable this. Lastly, Chrome 12 also incorporates additional support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics on selected platforms.

Correction: A reader pointed out that Chrome isn't the first on the scene; the ability to delete Flash cookies in IE8 was actually announced by Microsoft last month.

For more:
- check out this article at PCWorld
- check out this article at Computerworld
- check out this article at Ars Technica

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