Google has updated its Chrome browser to version 23 which brings some new features in addition to usual bug fixes. The notable features that come with this new chrome release include extended battery life for Windows users and Do not track feature.

Google claims to have 25% longer battery life  with the latest chrome update update by using GPU-accelerated video decoding feature to save battery power during video playback in the browser helping computers use less CPU computing power during video playback. It should be kept in mind that battery life is improved only if the System is having a dedicated GPU and not the shared GPU (which is majority of the entry level systems where GPU shares the CPU power and no dedicated GPU is available).

Do not track feature in Chrome is not enabled by default. You need to enable this feature under Chrome advanced settings. Even after enabling this feature, this setting only asks websites not to track, but its effectiveness depends on how websites and services respond to this request and hence this feature is far from perfect.

As per Google Chrome blog post:

the effectiveness of such requests is dependent on how websites and services respond, so Google is working with others on a common way to respond to these requests in the future.

Apart from the noted features above,  it also comes with better access to view and control website’s permissions such as geolocation, pop-ups, and camera/microphone access.

One of the problems though that still remains even after this release is the huge memory consumption by browser tabs. Google needs to work on that and hopefully deliver better chrome with better memory management in future.

Via: Google Chrome Blog