Google Tuesday released what it called a stable release of the Chrome browser for both Linux and the Mac.

It's the first peek at the Linux and Mac widgetry out of beta, finally catching it up to the Microsoft-harrying version of Chrome for Windows.

The Tuesday release of all three versions is supposed to be the fastest to date, up 213% in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark and 305% on the SunSpider benchmark compared to the first beta drop in September of 2008, 18 months ago.

Speed is supposed to be the browser's strong suit but Google has also added the ability to synchronize bookmarks and browser preferences - such as themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages and page zoom settings - across computers as well as new HTML5 capabilities like Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets and file drag-and-drop.

A built-in Flash Player will be added when the full release of Flash Player 10.1 comes out; some problems have to be ironed out first.

And to irritate a Flash-snubbing Apple some more it promises a "seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with."

Google claimed last week that the browser had 70 million active users.