OStatic

As announced on the Google blog, there is an official stable release 3.0 of the Chrome browser available now. You can download it here, and if you're already using Chrome, you'll be automatically updated to the new version. Google's post includes walkthroughs of some of the major new features, including significantly faster Javascript performance, a new look for the New Tab page, and improvements to the Omnibox--the search bar and address bar that makes it very speedy to navigate to sites you're looking for. Here's what you'll find under the hood in the new Chrome.

Following TechCrunch's recent post showing alleged photos of Google's upcoming Chrome OS, which don't seem to show much beyond the fact that the operating system may have very large icons, there are some new clues emerging about it. As Download Squad cites, based on notes in a post detailing changes to the Chrome browser's Chromium core, Chrome OS sounds a lot like a bootable browser running on Linux. There are reasons to believe that as soon as you start the operating system, you'll be in the Chrome browser, and reasons to believe that you won't have the choice to use other browsers. That could potentially cause Google trouble.

In a move that could quickly be followed by similar deals, Google has reportedly inked a deal with Sony to pre-install the Chrome web browser on new Sony VAIO computers. As JKOnTheRun notes, this marks the first deal that Google has signed with a hardware vendor to get Chrome involved in consumers? OOBE (out of box experience). The out of box experience with a browser is particularly important on consumer systems, where many users will simply use whichever browser is already installed, and similar bundling deals are what helped propel Microsoft's Internet Explorer to dominant market share. There isn't any word on what kind of money changed hands here, but I'm guessing it was a significant amount, and this deal is another sign of strong momentum for open source browsers. Check out more details here.?