…it’s an aggressive move destined to put the company even more squarely in the crosshairs of its rival Microsoft, which long ago crushed the most fabled browser of all, Netscape Navigator.

Speed may be Chrome’s most significant advance. When you improve things by an order of magnitude, you haven’t made something better—you’ve made something new. “As soon as developers get the taste for this kind of speed, they’ll start doing more amazing new Web applications and be more creative in doing them,” [Lars] Bak says. Google hopes to kick-start a new generation of Web-based applications that will truly make Microsoft’s worst nightmare a reality: The browser will become the equivalent of an operating system.

I’ve had a little time to try out Chrome myself – I like the clean look, and despite that this browser crunches data (giving the user the ability to look at the resources a page is using time-wise and size-wise via the JS Console), it seems to go faster than IE or FF.  I’m not quite used to it yet, but who knows, after time I may make it my default.  The only thing I don’t like about the beta version is that you can’t use the Google Toolbar with it – I need my Google Toolbar!  But hey, it IS a Google browser… I’m sure they’ll work something out.

While a part of me loves the idea of Google-zilla stomping all over MS, another part of me thinks ‘isn’t this whole Google thing getting a bit carried away?’  I mean really, I’ve got Google mail, a Google home page, a minor obsession with Google PageRank, not to mention that I get a Google direct deposit each month from the Google AdSense advertising I have on some of my sites that have Google ‘domains’ (even though they’re really GoDaddy domains) and which I manage via Google Analytics - is Google just a bit too pervasive with its sneaky-clean good looks and charm??