After the announcement that the Google Chrome browser extensions gallery was open to developers last week, today saw the launch to the public of the ability to download the addons that it has been filling its site with.

The first impression of the gallery is that it is certainly easy to navigate, with lists of ‘Today’s Top Picks’ (which seem to be editorial choices by the Google team), a list of the Most Popular extensions (by number of users) and then ‘Featured plugins’. Interestingly there are no ‘category’ pages, but there is of course access to Google’s search box if you can’t find what you’re looking for.

The extensions are very easy to download and install (nothing has changed with the process, but there is no sign-in needed for your Google account), and you can comment on each of the extensions and also rate them on a scale of 1-5 stars. These ratings contribute towards the ‘top rated’ list, and so it’s important to each extension that they build a loyal fanbase quickly.

Most of the ‘Google favourite’ extensions are currently placed in the top five in popularity, however many more unheard of extensions are now being featured on the site and are quickly making their way up the charts. It’ll be very interesting to find whether any newcomers to the addons and plugins market are born with this new page in the Chrome browser evolution.

The Chrome extension gallery is currently, like many products related to the big G, in ‘beta’, so expect to see small tweaks and changes over the next few weeks! You can go to the Google Chrome browser extension gallery by clicking here -> https://chrome.google.com/extensions