Google just did a very un-Googley thing.

It pushed Chrome out of the beta nest.

Chrome's only been in beta since September 2, something like a hundred days. And Google is famous for keeping widgetry in beta until the beta label turns yellow with age. Gmail, for instance, has been in beta going on five years now.

It's assumed it's because Google wants OEMs to start pre-loading the open source browser on their machines and that they can't do that until it's officially 1.0.

If they do, they'll have to take in warts and all. The feature-poor 1.0 release, for instance, awaits a Hotmail fix and despite Google's assurances of stability, users and testers say otherwise. And - not that many OEMs care - but there's no Linux or Mac version yet; it only works on Windows.

According to the Google blog announcing the transition, "We have removed the beta label as our goals for stability and performance have been met but our work is far from done. We are working to add some common browser features such as form autofill and RSS support in the near future. We are also developing an extension platform along with support for Mac and Linux."

Observers also eventually expect Chrome to meld with Google Apps and to be used as a preference guide so ads can be targeted better.

Chrome claims 10 million active users worldwide and tabulators have clocked its market share at under 1% against Microsoft with, say, 70%, Firefox with ~20% and Apple the rest.

In the 15 releases between beta and 1.0 apotheosis, Google has fixed audio and video glitches in Chrome - (the most commonly reported problems and kinda important if the thing's gonna be a web app platform) - and has gotten its V8 JavaScript engine to run 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark.

Its handlers also say it's "now easier to switch between another browser and Google Chrome with the bookmark import and export features, and we added a new simple way to manage large numbers of bookmarks, too. We also wanted to make it even easier for you to control your browsing data, so all of the features in Google Chrome that affect user privacy are now grouped in one place...

"We've taken security very seriously from the beginning and we will continue to look for ways to make Google Chrome and all browsers even more secure. Google Chrome's unique sandbox technology creates an additional layer of defense against harmful software, while the Safe Browsing feature provides protection against phishing and malware attacks for many browser users."