Google Chrome 14 Released

Google Chrome 14 has now been released to the stable channel, making it the first time more than 100 million users will get a chance to see this latest Chrome version in action.

Google Chrome 14 doesn't boast an impressive list of new features or updates, with most of the new things, at least the interesting ones, happening under the hood.

That said, Google Chrome 14 lays the groundwork for future developments with Native Client, Google's technology for running native code from the web, reaching a mature state.

Native Client is enabled by default in Google Chrome, enabling developers to create more powerful and faster web apps than what's been possible before.

"Today, we’re happy to ship a new release to the Stable channel of Chrome, following up on last month’s Beta channel release. This release contains two significant technologies which allow developers to create even more powerful web apps and games," Brad Chen, Software Engineer at Google, announced.

"The Web Audio API enables developers to add fancy audio effects such as room simulation and spatialization," he listed one of the big new features in Google Chrome 14.

"Native Client is an open-source technology which allows C and C++ code to be seamlessly and securely executed inside the browser," he explained.

"Currently, Native Client only supports applications listed in the Chrome Web Store, but we are working to remove this limitation as soon as possible," he added.

Native Client holds a lot of promise and Google has been working on it for a couple of years. It hasn't been easy, but Google has reached a point where it can enable developers to write code once, put it up on the web and have it run, almost as fast as native code running on 'bare metal,' on any (x86) operating system supported by Chrome.

As always, if you already have Chrome installed, it will automatically update itself to the new version soon. If you haven’t taken Chrome for a spin yet, you can download it from www.google.com/chrome.