gMail, gDesktop, gBrowser? Finally, Google to launch a browser

The nerderati already know this due to a slip of the lip at Google.  Google will launch the Google Browser, Chrome, tomorrow.  While Google Fanboys (and girls) are excited at the mere prospect of having a browser emblazoned with the web's biggest mega-property, and the tech journalism and blogging community is glad to have something other than the Republican National Convention to talk about, will the average internet user care? Not at first.

I'm sure you've figured out that Google can do whatever it wants.  Sometimes we care, as in the case of Blogger, and sometimes we don't, as in I've yet to meet anyone in the real world who has heard of Jaiku.

The good news for the browser effort is that there are pain points for Google to address with the Browser.  Despite the efforts of Microsoft, Apple, and the Mozilla project, no one has gotten the browser quite right yet in the space that counts most - stability.

In the announcement in their blog, Google says:

we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications

Despite our great fondness for FireFox, stability is one area they simply are not able to deliver on.  We use Firefox because we believe it less prone to invasion than Internet Explorer, and when we first install it, it is much faster.  Once you have your necessary extensions installed, however, there always seems to be some bad actor or other negative interaction that causes the browser to break down.  It gets slow, and sometimes just stops with a crash.

Firefox was born out of competition.  They felt like they could do IE better, and have.  It looks like Google thinks they can do better than FF, and tomorrow we may find out.

Need something to do until then?  Read the Google Chrome comic book introduction.