Google has released version 22 of their popular Chrome web browser and while it doesn’t come with a huge list of changes, there are a couple of features to get excited about if you are concerned with security. Google has infused Chrome with the fully hardware-accelerated Pepper Flash plug-in for Windows users, resulting in what has been described as unrivalled protection against malicious Flash apps found lurking on the Internet.
Chrome has had its fair share of vulnerabilities over the past few years but as Geek points out, its sandbox has been pretty tough to get around – and that’s exactly where Google is housing the Flash plug-in for safe keepings. The company claims that Flash-related crashes have been reduced by about 20 percent thanks to the change.
Of course, if you’re using the Linux version of Chrome, you’re already familiar with this new feature as it was added in version 20 a couple of months ago. It may seem unusual that Linux users received the new PPAPI plug-in ahead of Windows users but it actually makes sense seeing as Adobe decided to stop developing a Flash plug-in for Linux some time ago.
Chrome is built on top of Linux so if there were no Flash support for Linux, then eventually there wouldn’t be any Flash support for Chrome. And unlike Apple, Google is well aware that there are still many sites that utilize Flash content.
Chrome Mac users should be receiving a similar update in the near future.
