Google Chrome 2.0.171.0 comes at just over a week since the release of the previous development milestone Build 2.0.170.0. At the start of this week, Chrome 1.0 also evolved, and managed to reach version 1.0.154.53, a release set up to address a number of bugs. According to the Mountain View-based search giant the focus with Chrome 2.0.171.0 was to increase the reliability of the browser, while also enhancing the end user experience. At the same time, there are also minor feature additions introduced.

Jonathan Conradt, engineering program manager, explained that Google Chrome 2.0.171.0 featured WebKit version 530.4 and version 1.1.1.4 of its underlying V8 JavaScript engine. Furthermore, the latest iteration of Chrome 2.0 brings to the table “a new FTP implementation; Experimental Bookmark Menu (use bookmark-menu), Web Workers (use enable-web-workers), Implement SSL renegotiation, pressing the Del key while an item is selected in the form suggestion popup deletes that suggestion from the DB,” Conradt added.

Google is undoubtedly making headway with the development of Chrome. The Mountain View company is also aggressively pushing the browser through its web properties, leveraging websites such as YouTube in order to increase its installed base. Internet Explorer remains the easiest target for all Microsoft competitors, simply because of IE's market share. The Redmond company released Internet Explorer 8 on March 19, 2009, a browser release that it envisions as being capable to win back some of the ground lost to rivals such a Google, Firefox and Opera.

Conradt also enumerated some of the fixes delivered by Google with Chrome 2.0.171.0: “add command line switch "-new-ftp" for new portable FTP; add the directory listing code for the new portable FTP; SSL improvements; fix excessive CPU when scrolling Flash; fix crash on showing info bubble; aligning text to the right, especially RTL languages; fix dragging a Chrome window which has a single tab by the tab itself; do correct hit testing for context menu items; add support for progressive JPEGs with MIME type image/pjpeg.”

A browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier

One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications easily and quickly.

Here are some key features of "Google Chrome":

· One box for everything
· New Tab page
· Application shortcuts
· Dynamic tabs
· Crash control
· Incognito mode
· Safe browsing
· Instant bookmarks
· Importing settings
· Simpler downloads

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
· [r7615]Fixes a crash related to tab dragging (Issue: 5819)
· [r7616]Add a terminating NULL to the text read from the edit control. (Issue: 6053)
· [r7620]Enables restoring of keyboard focus to the the toolbar button that last had focus, before focus was lost (e.g to a dialog, another window, etc). Setting focus using the toolbar focus keyboard shortcut will still reset focus to the first enabled, visible button (starting at the Back button). (Issue: 5750)
· [r7644]In some cases (related to window.open() with no contents, see bug for more details) we may get notified of SSL error or mixed-contents without a NavigationEntry. (Issue: 3845)
· [r7664]If the URL text has no scheme, and starts with ftp., then default the scheme to ftp (Issue: 565)
· [r7669]Fixes an issue where Chrome hangs "Waiting for cache" (Issue: 4769)
· [r7703]Attempt to fix an issue related to SSL navigation. (Issue: 5800)
· [r7705]Fix for auto-detection of encoding (Issue: 3702)
· [r7724]Add debug menu to Linux test_she...

Reasons why this program is marked as adware:
· Attempts to change the homepage for web browsers installed on the system
· Attempts to change the default search engine for web browsers installed on the system