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Google Operation System: While most Chrome users have been upgraded to Chrome 10, Google is fixing the bugs from Chrome 11 and working on Chrome 12. A recent Chromium build made a significant change: Gears is no longer included in Google Chrome. Gears is a browser plugin released by Google back in 2007, The initial goal was to add support for offline web apps, but the plugin added many other HTML5 features at a time when HTML5 wasn’t a priority for most browsers. Google discontinued Gears last year to focus on “bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5” and to implement them in Google Chrome. Features like geolocation, notifications, web workers, application caches are already available in Google Chrome, so it’s probably the right time to stop bundling the Gears plugin. ...

Google Chrome Security Team wrote: We’re always working hard to enhance the Chrome browser with bug fixes, new defenses and new features. The release of Chrome 10 is no different, and there are some items worth highlighting: Chrome 10: Flash sandboxing With Chrome 10, our first cut of the previously announced Flash sandboxing initiative is now enabled by default for the Windows platform on Vista and newer. Additionally, because we automatically update Flash to the latest and most secure version, this should provide useful defense in depth. ...

Google Chrome 10 is ready for primetime and it comes with a surprising number of new features. Here are some of them: The Options dialog is now a web page that opens in a new tab. Chrome has one less modal dialog and the new Options page is better suited for netbooks. Another advantage is that each section of the Options page has a permalink that can be bookmarked. Even if Chrome doesn’t have too many customizable settings, there’s a search box that lets you quickly find an option. Try searching for “cookies” and you’ll notice that Chrome finds settings that aren’t immediately obvious. ...

cross-posted on the Official Google Blog Just three weeks ago, we kicked off the Year of the Rabbit with a speedy Chrome beta. Today, we’re excited to bring these speed improvements and more to everyone using Chrome. With today’s stable release, even your most complex web apps will run more quickly and responsively in the browser. (For the curious, this boost corresponds to a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite.) We realize that speed isn’t just about pure brawn in the browser—it’s also about saving time with simple interfaces. Chrome’s new settings interface will help you get to the right settings quickly so you don’t have to dig endlessly to find a way to import your bookmarks or change your browser’s homepage. We’ve added a search box that shows you the settings you’re looking for, as you type. On top of that, you can also copy and paste a direct link into Chrome’s address bar to jump to a specific settings page. (No more long, frustrating phone conversations with your dad on where to find that specific setting in the browser!) Here’s the new settings interface in action: ...

Google is always looking for new ways to make it easier for developers to get started with our APIs. When you come across a new Google API, you often want to try it out without investing too much time. With that in mind, we are happy to announce the Google APIs Explorer, an interactive tool that lets you easily try out Google APIs right from your browser. Today, the Explorer supports over a half dozen APIs – and we expect that number to grow rapidly over the coming weeks and months. ...

Mashable wrote: Google has broken new ground in the personal finance realm with the purchase of UK price comparison website BeatThatQuote for $61.5 million ($37.7 million GBP). BeatThatQuote, launched in 2005, provides price comparisons for UK loans, insurance, legal services, utilities and other financial products. It was named one of the UK’s fastest-growing websites by Nielsen in 2007. “Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google,” BeatThatQuote Managing Director John Paleomylites said in a statement on the company’s website. “We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.” ...

BetaNews.com: Android handsets infected with malware are getting a cleaning job from Google. On March 2nd, Google removed 21 apps from the Android Marketplace that contained malicious code (the number of infected apps is now 58). Now Google is “remotely removing the malicious applications from affected devices” and “pushing an Android Market security update to all affected devices that undoes the exploits to prevent the attacker(s) from accessing any more information from affected devices,” according to a blog post by Rich Cannings, Android security lead. ...

The Chrome OS Beta channel has been updated to R10 release 0.10.156.46 including the new Chrome 10 Beta, new trackpad and several stability and functional improvements over the previous release. This release contains the following security fixes: Scratchpad application security vulnerability fix In addition to all Chrome 10 new features (see Chrome 10 blogpost), there are several Chrome OS great improvements including: 3G modem activation fixes 3G connection to the carrier fixes Wi-Fi connectivity/Out of the Box fixes New trackpad and sensitivity setting adjusted Auto update engine and debugging improvements Power optimizations GTalk video/chat optimizations Audio CPU utilization improvements Improved on screen indicators: brightness, network status, update icon There is one known issue: ...

Internet giant buys into security. Internet giant Google has acquired software analytics firm Zynamics, it was announced yesterday. The German company, which was founded in 2004 by CEO Thomas Dullien (aka Halvar Flake) to research the automation of reverse engineering and code analysis, now produces four reverse-engineering tools:BinDiff, VxClass, BinNavi and BinCrowd, which are widely used by researchers in the security community. Google has not provided any clues as to how it plans to make use of the Zynamics technology, other than to bolster the protection offered to Google users. Details of the acquisition were not revealed. ...

Gmail Blog posted: Posted by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar (24×7) Imagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty. That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon. ...