Chrome did pretty well in April, according to the latest stats from Net Applications, increasing its market share by 0.60 percent.  And now, to perhaps speed the browser’s adoption even more, Google’s unveiled what it promises is the fastest beta version of Chrome to date.

"Today’s new beta release incorporates one of Chrome’s most significant speed and performance increases to date, with 30% and 35% improvement on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over the previous beta channel release," a post on the Google Chrome Blog boasted.

The new beta includes some fresh features, too, like the option to sync browser preferences, plus Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop capabilities.

It seems possible that the people behind other browsers will have to go back to the drawing board – or just weep – as a result.  IE already lost 0.70 percent of market share between March and April, according to Net Applications.  Opera slipped a little, too.  And Firefox, Safari, and Opera Mini gained a bit of market share, but not as much as they did between February and March.

Finally, for your viewing enjoyment, here’s a video involving potato guns, paint, a pirate ship, and a mock lightning strike that relates to the new beta’s speed.