A mere 100 days after the product’s launch, Google has pushed its Chrome browser out of Beta status.

The decision is uncanny, considering the company is well known for its leaving of products in beta for years. For instance GMail is still in Beta more than four years after its initial launch, and Picasa, Google’s photo editing software, only left beta recently, after being acquired by Google four years ago.

The company says that it removed Chrome’s beta tag as an indication of the software’s maturity, as they claim that they’ve met their goals for stability and performance. They do however mention that there is still work to be done.

Critics are quick to point to the browser’s unsuccessful market share however, and say that Google’s move was meant to increase that share. According to Net Applications, Chrome held only 0.83% of the browser market share in November, that’s just 0.05% more than in the first month it was available, September.

Google possibly believes that companies would take more heart to the browser once the beta tag is removed. Another strategic move it announced last month is paying OEMs to bundle chrome with new PCs.

Justifying Chrome’s graduation, Google says that the browser’s performance has gone up significantly since September, saying that the V8 JavaScript engine now runs 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark. The company claims it has addressed video and audio playback glitches, and will make the browser even faster in the future.

Google also intends to implement extensions, borrowing the concept from Mozilla’s Firefox. According to Google developer notes, they admit Chrome’s lack of extensions is detrimental to browser users, and they say that their solution will address the problem of users switching from other browsers being used to certain extensions they can’t live without.