In time for the second anniversary of its web browser Chrome, Google has released the sixth version, Chrome 6, with faster speed and more features, including several bug fixes. Last Thursday, product manager Brian Rakowski wrote in the company's blog that the latest version is stable and faster and more streamlined. The blogger went on to say that the new Chrome 6 is three times faster than it was two years ago on JavaScript. And has been further simplified by minimizing user interfaces and stripping it down for ease of use.

For instance, Chrome’s two menus have been combined into one and the location of the buttons has been shifted. Plus, the URL treatment has been improved along with the Omnibox. For the eyes, the color scheme of the browser has been refined.

Since Chrome’s first beta launch for Windows, the browser has been extended to Mac and Linux platforms and continues to offer improvements in speed, simplicity and safety across all three platforms. In addition, according to Chrome blog, it has been face lifted with many new features. These include a more customizable New Tab page, themes, side-by-side view, a password manager, better privacy controls, a built-in Adobe Flash Playe, Autofill, automatic translation, HTML5 capabilities and synchronization of various settings, such as bookmarks, extensions and browser preferences, to name a few.

In short, to enhance user experience, there are now more than 6000 extensions in the Chrome gallery, according to Google. Media reports indicate that these enhancements are being noticed by the competition, prompting them to adopt some of them. According to a report in Wired, Chrome has had considerable impact on other browsers in the market since its arrival in 2008. For example, Firefox and IE 9 are mimicking its minimal interfaces list, as well as tightly sandboxing browsers to improve stability and security.

As reported on Wired site, the new market data shows that Chrome with 7.5 percent of worldwide browser share had surpassed Safari with 5.2 percent share. Internet Explorer accounts for over 60 percent of worldwide market, while Firefox and Opera capture 23 percent and 2 percent, respectively.