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

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.

The Google Chrome team has created a slew of new videos to promote their browser.

You can watch each and everyone of them from the Google Chrome YouTube channel. The 11 featured videos are all new, with 42 videos now in the channel.

A new project has been started by Mozilla with the aim of splitting up Firefox over several processes, with one process for the user interface, and one process for each open tab.

This is similar to both Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer 8, which both use multiple processes. The advantage of this is that if one tab crashes, it only closes one tab, rather than all open tabs, increasing the general stability of the browser.

The multi-process approach also allows the browser to take use of multiple CPU cores which are increasingly becoming the standard.

At this stage, it doesn’t seem like we will see a full release of this technology in Firefox for at least a year. More information on the project can be found in the Mozilla Links blog.

Google has released a new version of Chrome over night patching a high-severity security hole.

The flaw, discovered on April 8 by IBM, allowed for cross-site scripting attacks through the use of malicious JavaScript on a website.

Google Chrome program manager, Mark Larson, describes how the flaw could work. “An error in handling URLs with a chromehtml: protocol could allow an attacker to run scripts of his choosing on any page or enumerate files on the local disk under certain conditions.”

“If a user has Google Chrome installed, visiting an attacker-controlled Web page in Internet Explorer could have caused Google Chrome to launch, open multiple tabs, and load scripts that run after navigating to a URL of the attacker’s choice. Such an attack only works if Chrome is not already running” wrote Larson.

The patch will be pushed out automatically to current Chrome users, and will take the browser to version 1.0.154.59. New users can download the latest Google Chrome directly.

Ars Technica has posted a great review of the current state of Chrome for Mac. Included are two videos showing how far Chromium has come in just the last few months.

Karen Grünberg said “we’re working as fast as possible and progressing as fast as we can without compromising security” and suggested that we might see a beta release in Q3 09.

The article also includes detailed instructions on how to compile pre-release Chromium builds on Mac. Be sure to check it out.

LinuxHaxor has discovered that early-pre-alpha builds of Chromium, which Google Chrome is based off, is 4 times faster than current stable builds of Firefox on Linux.

The test was run with the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark tool.

While these results are impressive, LinuxHaxor mentions that current Google Chrome Windows builds are still 2 times faster than early Chromium builds for Linux.