Google released Chrome version 5 developer builds for Windows and Mac on Friday. "The devchannel has been updated to 5.0.307.1 for Windows and Mac," said the firm. On the Windows side of the fence, the default downloads directory on Vista and Windows 7 can now be used. Google has added a content settings window to the latest rough-round-the-edges iteration of its browser.

It was bound to happen. Google is now roping in the power of hardware acceleration to boost the performance of its Chrome browser. In a post on the Chromium blog late last week the Chromium developers announced that they would add GPU (graphics processing unit) support to future editions of the Chrome browser, bringing Google's application in line with other major browsers.

Four months after the release of version 4.0 for Windows, Google has announced the availability of Chrome 5.0 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux - the first stable release to be available on all three major platforms

Google Chrome, the latest open source browser developed by the almighty Google is already out. It is currently in Beta and is only available for Windows, as Linux and Mac OS X versions are still under development. I have tried Chrome today and here are my initial impressions.

Rumours abound that Google's Chrome OS will be 'open sourced' in the coming week, although the early glimpses are likely to be some way from the final product due for release in late 2010.

As with anything new coming from Google, there has been a lot of expectation regarding the new Google “operating system” for PCs based on the Chrome browser.

The Chromium blog (Chromium being Google’s name for the open source project behind their Chrome browser) reports that developer builds of Google Chrome are now available for both Mac OS X and Linux.

Google's Chromium project announced it is working on its first 64-bit version of its Chrome web browser, which will will arrive first on Linux. Meanwhile, Linux is increasingly driving development of 64-bit software -- simply because Linux power users are demanding it, says an industry blog.

First released in 2008, Google Chrome is the third most widely used web browser, coming after Internet Explorer and Firefox with a 7% market share. However, until the recently, the GNU/Linux version lagged behind the Windows version.