Google has launched its Chrome browser in beta phase. As time goes by, it becomes more and more obvious that what appeared to be at first just another strange project from Google Labs is a direct hit at Internet Explorer's dominance, the first actual threat to Microsoft's browser. This is no Google experiment. It's a full-fledged attack to snatch up the browser world just as it snatched up search.

Also, Chrome is not in pretty-buggy-beta phase (mislabeled alpha phase), but in a pretty usable state. It's only a matter of months before it will be released as final version. We're talking about a browser which was allegedly used internally for about two years before its low-key release.

Google already fixed, rather quickly, three flaws in the first beta released: a buffer overflow that could be triggered by saving a page with an overly long title header; the so-called “carpet bombing” flaw, inherent to the older version of WebKit on which Chrome is based; and an issue which caused Chrome to be made to crash by using a link with an undefined handler.

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 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?