After expanding, well, almost everywhere in the digital realm, Google seeks to conquer yet another territory: the very window that you're accessing the Internet through. For now, Google is everywhere on the web, but still doesn't own the very tool to view the web: the Internet browser, which was usually Microsoft's Internet Explorer for most people, and Firefox for most of the remaining Internet users.

With Chrome, Google seeks to infiltrate Microsoft's most precious assets: its Internet Explorer and Windows operating system. It seeks to replace Internet Explorer and enable running complicated web applications, much like a standalone operating system.

By having a browser built from the ground-up to carry out complex functions, Google can make obsolete complex PC-based programs like Microsoft's cash cow, the Office productivity suite. And once PCs run everything through a browser and don't have to host gigantic programs, it also doesn't matter if they are running windows, Linux, Apple or any other operating system.
"Google (is) designing not so much a traditional Web browser, but a Web application platform," said Stephen J Waughun, author of Computerworld's Cyber Cybic blog. "Killing Internet Explorer isn't really Chrome's goal. No, killing Microsoft Office is Chrome's goal."
That should set off alarm bells in the executive office of a certain software company based near Seattle. "Memo to Steve Ballmer: If you've got a panic button, now might be a good time to hit it," wrote Tom Bemis, an editor at MarketWatch.

Google Chrome is open source, and written from scratch, and will feature many improvements such as multithreading, enabling separate threads to render separate tabs, preventing an overall browser lock-up due to a faulty page or, more frequently, a JavaScript glitch.

It will feature a new JavaScript Virtual Machine, too. It's quite obvious that basically all virtual machines used by today's browsers, well, suck. They hang up frequently, slow down even the fastest computers for some crappy, basic operations, and they suck up gigabytes of memory for no apparent memory. Google's solution is the brand new V8 virtual machine, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, which promises to fix all these problems.

Also, the tab system will be completely revamped. The tabs will be displayed on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar, as in today's browsers. There's also a privacy mode which can be enabled for a single tab.

Furthermore, Google promises that each tab is sandboxed so that it won’t go on and affect your entire operating system. This means everything can be safely and separately closed should problems occur.

Google has, however, created hype around many of its projects and they eventually turned uninteresting. It remains to be seen how this project will evolve, but Google's apparently unstoppable expansion into seemingly every aspect of digital interaction makes one worry about things like privacy, monopoly, and more.

Letting aside the privacy fears, you should know that the browser is now available for download at http://www.google.com/chrome/ and its deployment marks a new threat to Internet Explorer, which has seen its market share drop almost 20 per cent to just 73 per cent in the four years since its open source rival Firefox came out.

Other analysts also applauded the move with the main criticism being: "What took Google so long?" "The browser is a key piece of Google's strategy, delivering "improved access to data and user behaviour without relying on Microsoft," said UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter. He cautioned however, that users might not download the browser in sufficient quantities to make a difference.

Apparently so far Microsoft is not too scared by the new competitor. "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, in a statement.

Well…maybe he is right, maybe not…time will tell!