Yesterday at the Le Web 08 conference in Paris, Google VP of search products and user experience Marissa Mayer revealed that the company's Chrome browser was coming out of beta soon. While Mayer offered no solid date, it appears that she spoke just a day too soon, for the release of Chrome's final version is now official.

On its blog, Google reveals that problems with the way Chrome displays video and audio files have been fixed and that the final release version of the browser runs almost twice as fast as the very first beta release. The final version also has better bookmarking capability and privacy controls. Google says the team is still working to deliver native support for RSS feeds, extension support, Mac and Linux versions, among other requested features.

Chrome has a long way to catch up to Internet Explorer, which has about 70 percent of the market, and even Firefox which holds about 20 percent. However, the fact that this is one of the fastest beta-to-full launch offerings from Google yet highlights its importance to the search giant, which needs the browser to grow as part of its overall cloud-centric computing vision.