Google Chrome has now officially revealed that now version number fifteen of the beta version has been released it is now longer a beta version. For more information, you can read Google’s official article here Google Chrome – Beta.
What does this change? At the moment, I believe that things will carry on as normal in the browser market and it really depends in the short term on how Google market the browser. The take up of Google Chrome initially was quite quick amongst web developers trying out the new browser but despite it being impressively quick, Google Chrome’s market share dropped as developers missed the powerful plugins like the web developer toolbar and firebug which are offered by Firefox.
I must admit that when building websites, Firefox is my browser of choice, and even though I’ll check rendering in IE, Safari and Opera, my first point of call is always Firefox due to it’s ease of use for debugging problems.
However, if I’m online and just want to quickly browse then I have started to get in the habit of launching Google Chrome. Purely for the simple fact that it launches quickly and pages load so much faster than any other browser.
If Google can reach out the huge numbers of Internet Explorer users then there is the possibility that they could conquer the browser market, but that’s a big “if”. Firefox, Opera and Safari have so far failed in converting the majority of web users over to their far superior browsers so would Google be chasing a lost cause if they were to go down that route or can they capture the vast amount of users that are online searching everyday and market their new browser in such a way that users will switch their browser of choice?
For now I’ll be staying with Firefox but if there’s a Firebug and web developer toolbar plugin that becomes available for Google Chrome soon then I may be forced to reconsider.
Still not available on Mac, though 🙁 *sighs*