Google has launched its Google Chrome browser, and competitors are quite worried. They are worried not because Google has entered the browser war (which was expected for some time) but because Chrome is more than just a browser. Google wants to take over the Internet world, more or less, by providing a browser which is more or less a standalone Internet-oriented operating system, because it runs complicated web applications across different operating systems, which eventually can become obsolete.

Google's new browser 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.

Chrome features 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 reason. 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 is 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 (porn 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 Chrome is not just another browser. Google said that the problem with other browsers is that they were continuous improvements of older browsers, whose design dates back to when browsing was a lot different than it is today. While that is essentially true, the fact that Google and not another company has the edge on the next-generation browsers is unsettling, as Google expands its presence and dominance of the Internet by the day and exponentially so should its browser be adopted.

Some are asking: Will Google become the next Microsoft? Isn't it already?