Google unveiled Chrome 25 beta today, with some notable improvements, such as voice search. Other changes include the disabling of silent extension installs, the inclusion of Web Speech API, and a new tab page that includes a search box.

Google's blog post announcing the new beta:

Using your voice to search on your computer or phone is handy, but there's so much more you can do with voice commands. Imagine if you could dictate documents, have a freestyle rap battle, or control game characters with your browser using only your voice. With today's Chrome Beta release, this future is closer than you think.

 

With the inclusion of the Web Speech API for developers, users can start enjoying new, interactive experiences with web apps, like in this demo where you can compose an email by speaking. With this new JavaScript API, developers can integrate speech recognition into their web apps. So, in the near future you'll be able to talk apps into doing all sorts of things.

 

To make sure your Chrome installation isn't being slowed down, today's Chrome Beta will automatically disable some extensions on Windows that may have been added by third party programs without proper acknowledgement from users. The original intent was to give people an option to add useful extensions when installing applications, but unfortunately this feature has been widely abused by third parties who added extensions without user consent. A notification will appear with the option to re-enable the affected extensions.

 

Download Chrome Beta to give these latest enhancements a test drive. If you dig APIs more than chocolate cake you can get more details on the Web Speech API and this Chrome release over on the Chromium blog.

You can pick up the latest Chrome beta on Google's website.