Themes are even closer for browser Google Chrome, with recent developer builds including theme support already.

TechCrunch has been able to confirm that themes will be available in an online gallery from Google themselves.

While some early themes have been around for a while, latest builds allow users to push themes out to the browser, with an easy option to revert to previous themes if the user desires.

No word on when this feature will make it into the public releases, but expect things to start speeding up.

Thanks to a new algorithm, Google is able to push out Chrome updates in one tenth of the size they used to.

This means that Chrome updates can be pushed out to more simultaneously, protecting users against threats faster than before.

An example has been given on the recent update from 190.1->190.4 on the development channel.

Google has pushed out Chrome 2.0.172.37 to users of the browser, patching two security holes.

The security holes would allow an attacker to run arbitrary code in the Google Chrome sandbox and even with the privileges of the logged on user.

Other changes include:

• Fix: Solving captcha images broken at orkut.com. (Issue15569)
• Make forward/backward navigation work even when redirection is involved. (Issue 9663, issue 10531)
• Fix: Daylight savings time not recognized for some CET locales. (Issue 12579)
• Fix a browser crash on closing a URL request. (Issue 8942)
• Update the V8 Javascript engine to version 1.1.10.14 to fix issues with regular expressions.
• Update Gears to the latest release, 0.5.25.0.

The update will be pushed out automatically to Chrome users.

Nightly Mac builds of WebKit, the basis of which Safari and Google Chrome are built on, now include 3D CSS transforms.

3D CSS transforms allow web developers to manipulate objects in the third dimension with simple CSS rules. Current CSS3 standards do not include these 3D transforms, but Apple has submitted 3D CSS transforms to the W3C for consideration as an official CSS standard.

The 3D transforms are already available in iPhone OS 2.0 and up.

Users or developers wanting to check out this new feature can download the latest nightly build from WebKit. The following 3D transform demos are available:

• Charles Ying’s Snow Stack photo browser
• Peter Zich’s 3D Van “model” rotating in space
• Peter Zich’s 3D Image Fly, another image browser (hint: click and drag to rotate)

Google has released the first early development builds of Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, but has stressed these builds are far from complete and are missing many common features.

According to Chrome developers, these builds lack the ability to watch YouTube videos, the option to print, change privacy settings amongst a large list of other missing features.

Those still wanting to test out the browser on these new platforms can use the links below:

Download Google Chrome for Mac OS X
Download Google Chrome for Linux

Browser market share results have been released for May 2009 thanks to Market Share by Net Applications, and no surprises as Microsoft Internet Explorer loose another 0.5% of it’s market share, dropping back to 65%.

Firefox had a steady month, still with its 22.5% share. Apple’s Safari has jumped from 8.2% to 8.4% this month, while Google Chrome has seen a jump from 1.4% to 1.8%.

Opera has also stayed steady, with 0.7% of the pie. Microsoft should be concerning, with the recent release of Internet Explorer 8 hoping to patch the trickle of users flocking to other browsers.

The full detailed statistics for May’s results are available online.

With the release of Google Chrome 2 just out the door, Google has started work on Chrome 3, with the latest developer build being version 3.0.182.2.

The latest development build fixes a few bugs, as well as adding new features. A full list of changes can be found in the release notes.

Users wanting to test out this release can change their browser to the developer channel.

Google has just bumped Chrome up a version, with the latest release now bring 2.0.172.28.

The new release is now 30% faster than the previous release according to Google.

Chrome 2.0 also adds new features, including full screen mode, form autofill, and the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page.

The release is available to new users from the Chrome website, and existing users will be upgraded automatically.

With the latest developer build of Google Chrome being released this week (version 2.0.180.0), evidence has surfaced showing that extensions and plug-ins are on their way for the browser.

Release notes show that developers have implemented “extensions window & tabs API events.”

“The extensions posse would like to point out that as of today’s dev channel release, extensions are starting to be a bit more useful. We can now put little bits of UI (user interface) in the chrome of Chrome, and some of the APIs (application programming interfaces) are starting to come together,” said Google programmer Aaron Boodman. “There is still quite a ways to go, but if you’re interested in building extensions for Chrome, this might be a good time to start taking a look.”

Google has also updated Chrome Extension HOWTO and included some sample extensions, including a gmail checker.

You can download the latest developer release from the Chromium website.

Google is set to run an advertising campaign on television in the United States, in a bid to steal market share away from rival Microsof’s Internet Explorer.

Currently, Google Chrome holds almost 1.5% of the browser market share, while Internet Explorer is streaks ahead at 66%.

“We designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser, and also help us better understand how television can supplement our other online media campaigns,” said a post on Google’s corporate blog.

The first advertisements are expected to air over the weekend.