Oh-ho, I think we have a breakthrough here:

Google Enters the Browser Wars

Tuesday, Sep. 02, 2008 By JOSH QUITTNER

A new superpower just entered the long-simmering browser war: today, after years of secret work, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, will unveil its own browser, called Chrome.

“On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple,” Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, wrote on the official Google blog on Monday afternoon… “Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.”

Chrome looks like a “best of” browser, incorporating — and in some cases, improving upon — a few of the most popular features of its competitors…

… With a 72% share of the browser market, Microsoft is the real target here. Far from sinking into irrelevance, desktop computer browsers have continued to evolve and become even more integral to how we use the Web. Whoever controls that experience can leverage it to the detriment of website owners — and in ways that must keep the Google guys up at night. For instance, IE 8 makes it far easier to find something without going through a Google search. When you search within IE 8, you’re presented with a number of buttons, such as Search Yahoo! or Search Wikipedia…

I checked out the cartoon the article linked to. It said the cartoon was leaked in an email, I think, and it has all the boring junk about what Chrome improves on, does, blah blah blah. Stuff I don’t really understand, but somehow, it comes up useful anyway.

All I was hoping is that it wouldn’t end up a disaster like Vista.

Then I stumbled across the page were Google claimed that with Chrome, when you close a tab, it ends the application immediately.

!!!

And that’s when the built-in ’Hallelujah’ chorus (that everyone has in their heads) went off. After years and years of having Microsoft IE freeze up on me because it couldn’t end an unresponding process when I wanted it to, I was about ready to hack into Google headquarters and steal a beta version myself. Do you know how much time I would’ve saved over the years if the Internet applications closed LIKE I WANTED THEM TO?! It’s like trying to train Rover the bad dog to stop chewing up the good futon, and one day, when I switched his dog food from IE Munch to Chrome Crunch, he suddenly decides to sharpen his nails on the scratching post and chew up the rubber bones like you want him to.

Okay, bad metaphor, but I’m trying to explain how anxious I am to see if Chrome is really all that great.

And maybe we’ll have to switch from JavaScript to this new thing called ‘V8,’ but it’ll be worth it, right? I mean, I could probably write an AP Euro analysis in the time stalled everyday when my dad’s stupid old computers freeze up from a few too many applications.

Wait. Wasn’t V8 the name of that vegetable soda…?