As far back as 2004, rumors of Google entering the browser space swirled through the blogosphere. The idea was that in the not-all-that-distant future, the full fledged Operating Systems like Windows XP or Mac OS X would be replaced by thin client OS’s, with the browser doing all of the heavy lifting. After all, these days much of our email, contacts, calendars, pictures, etc., are all hosted on the web, or in the “cloud.” Industry folks figured that if anyone would begin the transition, it would be Google, whose suite of web apps has been growing since the introduction of Gmail. And thus the rumors were born. But just when those rumors reached a fever pitch, Google CEO Eric Schmidt put his foot down, bringing the G-Browser talks to a screeching halt.

In 2004, he simply stated, “We are not building a browser.” Later in 2006, he changed the wording just a bit:

It looks like people have some good browser choices already. We would not build a browser for the fun of building a browser.

2 years later, Google must have found another reason to build a browser other than fun, because Google Chrome was released.

Google Chrome

At around Noon PST, Google entered the internet browser market, joining Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Opera (as well as a few other smaller browsers.) Web designers need not worry about an additional browser to test. If your site renders correctly in Safari, then you’ll be ok in Chrome, as they’re both built on the WebKit platform. Chrome’s default search engine is Google (naturally), but it can be changed in the settings, which is basically the same as Firefox’s method for handling searches.

There are plenty of cool little features in Chrome that might pull some people from the industry leaders. One of my favorites is the ability to save a web application as a desktop, quick launch, and/or start menu icon, which will launch that app in its own window, much like any other native program.

Chrome is available as a Windows download now, with a Mac and Linux port said to be just around the corner.