Mac OS X and Apple newsgroups report that Google finally released the beta version of its Chrome browser for Mac on Tuesday.

Just when you thought there were already too many OS X browsers—Safari, Firefox, OmniWeb, Camino, iCab, and Opera, to name but a few—Google Chrome joins the party.

Chrome for Mac has been a long time coming, more than a year after its Windows counterpart first debuted in beta. Though it was originally intended to release in the first half of 2009, the product hit numerous delays. Google has been behind schedule in launching the Mac version of its Chrome browser, product manager Brian Rakowski acknowledged on the Google blog.

“We’ve been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it!” the development team said on its official blog. “We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we’ve focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we’re very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there’s hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!”

This first beta release does not, however, include support for extensions, bookmark sync, bookmark manager, or cookie manager. Future releases will add these features. Google put an extensions system for its Chrome browser into a beta channel on Tuesday and opened up a gallery featuring more than 300 extensions. Some of the most popular extensions include a Google Mail Checker, to display the number of unread messages in the Google Mail in-box; an RSS Subscription Extension; and Zemanta, to expand a blogging dashboard. Other extensions are expected, with possibilities of accessing USENET newsgroups with the browser as an option.

Update: a Linux version of the browser is also now available.