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Google promises Web surfers a "faster browser, safer downloading" with Chrome 17, the newest build of its popular browser to land in the stable channel. To back up those claims, Google made it so the omnibox predicts which site it thinks you're trying to visit and will now autocomplete as you start hammering out a Web address. On the security front, Chrome 17 checks executable files against a whitelist to try and find a match. If it doesn't find one, Chrome checks in with the mothership (Google) for more information and to see if the site you're trying to visit is known for distributing malware.
In addition, Google pulled $10,500 from its wallet and handed the money to bug hunters for discovering 20 bugs, 11 of which were worth a bit of coin. The biggest single bounty was a $2,000 payout for a vulnerability rated High that deals with a "buffer overflow in locale handling." The rest were worth $500 and $1,000 each and dealt with PDF fixes, clipboard monitoring, a sandbox tweak, and more.
Chrome is now the second or third most popular desktop browser on the planet, depending on which market share data you look at, and could conceivably leap ahead of Internet Explorer before 2012 comes to a close.
You can download Chrome here.
Comments are closed on this article
markstrelecki
February 11, 2012 at 8:59am
Paul -
PLEASE start using your Spell Checker.
O M G, man!
Mark Strelecki
Proofreader In Training
