22 May 2013, 16:46

Chrome 27 comes with better load speeds and security fixes

Google Chrome logo

The Chrome developers at Google have released version 27 of their browser to the Stable release channel for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer. The new version, Chrome 27.0.1453.93, includes performance improvements with a new scheduler and fixes a number of security vulnerabilities – most of them rated as High – that Google's bug bounty program rewarded with almost $15,000 in total.

Chrome 27 also introduces a filesystem API that allows the browser to synchronise application data through the Google Drive service. Among the bug fixes, a dependency problem which stopped Chrome being easily installed on Ubuntu 13.04 has also been fixed, one release earlier than Canonical was expecting.

In an announcement entitled "every second counts", Google explains that the new scheduler in the browser makes pages render 5% quicker on average. The speed increase should be most notable with documents made up of a large number of images and a lot of JavaScript code. More details on the new technology are available in a white paper published by the Chrome Speed Team.

The Chrome developers have also highlighted 17 security holes closed in Chrome 27 and paid out 13 bug bounties. Arne Kettunen of the Oulu University Secure Programming Group was awarded $3133.7 for finding four different memory safety problems in the Web Audio component. Most of the other High-rated vulnerabilities also have to do with memory management issues and earned their discoverers payouts of between $500 and $2000, totalling almost $15,000. The developers have also shipped a new version of the Flash Player which means Chrome comes with Flash Player version 11.7.700.203.

Chrome 27.0.1453.93 is being delivered as an automatic update on all supported platforms. It is also available to download from Google free of charge. Chrome is proprietary software, built from Google's open source Chromium project.

See also: