Speed might just be the most important element of any Web browser. Users expect to type in an address and get to a Web site with little to no delay. Out of all the browsers, Chrome is usually considered to be the speediest around, but now Google has some hard numbers to show that Chrome really is getting faster all the time.

Toon Verwaest, Software Engineer for Google, pointed to the latest Octane benchmark scores for the newest release of Chrome Beta. Over the past year, Chrome’s speed has increased by 26 percent.

Of course, Octane only measures a browser’s JavaScript performance. There are other factors to consider, but Google addresses those as well. Verwaest says that Google has been striving to “minimize wait times” in Chrome. For instance, he says that the company has made some server-side changes to Google Cloud Print that makes Chrome’s printer selection dialog load twice as fast.

Google is also working on “reducing the browser’s startup time” and “setting up automated tests to catch any code changes that would slow Chrome down.” With these enhancements, it’s easy to see why people would view Chrome as the fastest browser today.

In all reality, however, Chrome is only the fastest browser on some computers and devices. Surprisingly enough, a recent study from New Relic found that Internet Explorer 10 is actually the fastest browser on Windows PCs. In fact, Chrome 21 is behind Firefox 15 and Safari 5 when it comes to speed on Windows.

Things look up for Chrome, however, when it gets into Mac OS X. Chrome 18, 19, 20, 21 and 22 are the five fastest browsers on Mac OS X at the moment, with Chrome 19 being the fastest.

Putting numbers aside, Chrome is a fast browser that will serve the needs of any who use it. You can grab the latest beta release, with the above mentioned speed improvements, here.