Google announced today that Chrome, its new web browser, has completed testing and is ready for full release.

The move paves the way for PC makers to pre-install it on the computers they sell, giving the browser a better chance of challenging the dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Several PC makers are believed to be enthusiastic about offering Chrome as their default browser, but they were unable to do so until it had come out of “beta” testing and customers could therefore be assured that it is glitch-free.

Google’s move came a few weeks earlier than had been expected. The company had previously said testing would be complete in early January.

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Anders Sandholm, product manager at Google, said: “The response to Google Chrome has been outstanding, and we are continuing to explore ways to make it accessible to even more users. This could potentially include distribution agreements with OEMs [original equipment manufacturers – the PC makers].”

Google would not confirm whether it was already talking to computer manufacturers about a deal to pre-install the browser.

Analysts have said that Microsoft eventually defeated Netscape Navigator in the browser war of the late 1990s primarily because Internet Explorer was packaged with the Windows operating system that dominated the PC market, and thus became the default choice for most web users.

A test version of Chrome was made available to the public in September. Today, Google said that it was already being used by ten million active users and that many more had downloaded the product. The company also claimed that successful updates to the product had increased its speed by 50 per cent since launch.

Chrome still has a long way to go before it challenges Internet Explorer. Latest industry figures show that Explorer currently enjoys a 71 per cent market share worldwide, with Mozilla Firefox at nearly 20 per cent. Chrome is used by fewer than 1 per cent of all web users.

The latest version of Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer 8, was launched in August. It will come as standard with all PCs using the latest version of its operating system, Windows 7, which should be ready for release by January 2010.

Google said it was working on Apple and Linux-compatible versions of Chrome, but could not say when they would be ready. In an interview with The Times last month, Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management, said that he expected a Mac and Linux version of the browser to be ready in the first half of next year.

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