Xmarks testing bookmark, password sync for Google Chrome browser

Sure, Google began rolling out the ability to synchronize your bookmarks across various instances of the Google Chrome browser yesterday. And that means you can make sure that your bookmarks are up to date on your home and work computers, as well as your netbook, home theater PC, and any other machines you happen to have that are running Google Chrome. But what if you want to keep your Chrome bookmarks synchronized with your Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari bookmarks?

Xmarks makes a popular plugin for those browsers that lets you not only backup and synchronize your bookmarks, but also your saved passwords. That means you can create a bookmark or save your login and password information for a site in Firefox on one computer, load Internet Explorer on the same PC or another, and have the same passwords and bookmarks.

And now Xmarks is working on a Google Chrome plugin. Of course, the stable version of Chrome doesn't support plugins yet, so you'll need to use the developer channel version of Chrome. If you're already using Chrome, one of the easiest ways to switch channels is to use the Google Channel Changer and then when Chrome checks for updates it will install the latest developer build.

Xmarks for Chrome is still in the early alpha stages. You can sign up to request an invitation. But you should keep in mind that we're talking about using a pre-release plugin on a pre-release browser, so don't expect a flawless user experience at this point.

Tags: google-chrome, synchronization, xmarks, xmarks-for-google-chrome