[Hazirak]

While rumors of a Google-branded web browser have been around for years, now it's official - 'Chrome' is the name of Google's web browser project. Their method of announcing it was a little unorthodox, though - they did so through a 38-page comic book.

Features being touted for this new browser include placing the address bar below the tabs rather than above them, a new JavaScript virtual machine called V8, an 'omnibox' that sounds very similar to Firefox's AwesomeBar, and an anonymous window mode akin to Internet Explorer's InPrivate feature.

The comic points to www.google.com/chrome as the official website, but as of this posting, all that comes up is a 404 error.

Read more here.

While no official release date has been set, it will be interesting to see what comes out of this whole project.

[Scoochi2]

Originally Posted by Hazirak

The comic points to www.google.com/chrome as the official website, but as of this posting, all that comes up is a 404 error.

But did you notice that it isn't Google's normal 404 page?
Try some other addresses, and notice the difference in 404.

www.google.com/chrom
http://www.google.com/iloveoompaloom...ddownatparties

[Scott B]

Hmm, I wonder if this means that Google is going to drop their strong affiliations with Firefox?

[xPlozion]

I would love to see something new and innovative like this. Stops the browser from getting above 200MB ram usage, which firefox tends to do quite frequently... but god bless it's plugins (adblock plus, web developer and html validator)

[Hazirak]

Google has officially released a beta version of the browser today. You can download it by going to the Chrome website above (which now actually works!) and clicking the download button. Unfortunately, only a Windows XP/Vista version is available at this time.

Haven't had a lot of playtime with it yet, but first impressions are promising.

[Nathan H]

I now have this as my default browser and it is brilliant. Quick seemingly stable and looks really nice. main dig though, because of the tab bar on top vista won't apply the normal theme. But the spell checker on every text box is a really useful feature.

[hamsn]

Google yet again shows its simplicity and speed here as it is in search engines.

Look at the simple design compared to the whole lot messed up functions and menu bars.
Edit:
its not 474kb...its just the setup initialiser, when u download this 474kb, and run it, the actual setup file begins to download, this is chrome.

[nterror]

The high resource usage in Firefox is due to the plug-ins. With no plug-ins I hit 22MB RAM usage, with basic everyday plug-ins I hit 36MB. =/

As far as Chrome goes, looks like it could replace Opera on my end. I only use it occasionally due to quick startup speed and high scores on the Acid tests. Google's Chrome is based on WebKit, which is getting 100/100 in Safari.

[Smith6612]

For me, Firefox runs at roughly 60MB. The only add-on I have running is adblock (for those times my Linux box may miss an ad or two), but of course Firefox is also integrated into Vista's Aero feature, and I have 10 tabs open.

[xPlozion]

:( XP/Vista only... oh well, they'll have a linux release eventually... :-/