Google Chrome is Out of Beta

This has to be some sort of record for Google which usually keeps their products in a perpetual state of beta.  Gmail was released over four years ago and it still has the beta tag attached to it.  There may, however have been very good reason why Google decided to rush Chrome out of Beta.

Here’s the announcement put on the Google Chrome help blog:

We’ve heard a lot of feedback about product bugs and feature requests and have worked hard to prioritize work on them. We’re excited to announce that with today’s fifteenth release we are taking off the “beta” label! 

But why Google, why have you rushed Chrome out of beta?

Google Chrome is not out of beta because it’s ready, but because Google wants to sign some deals with computer manufacturers like Dell that will preinstall the browser. ” The Google’s open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs who can’t offer the browser until it is in full release,” mentions TechCrunch. Even German’s Federal Office for Information Security said that Google’s browser is not for general use because it’s still in beta. If that’s price to increase the adoption, then Google didn’t have to do much: just pretend that Chrome is ready for prime-time.

That’s probably a pretty good assessment of why Chrome got pushed to 1.0 so fast.  Still, I’ve been using Chrome for a while and it’s lightening fast with a super clean interface and I’m definitely looking forward to see what improvements Google make to the browser now that it’s officially out of beta and into production.