The web is buzzing with the news that Google have officially announced their own web browser and it will be released (in beta) today.

‘Google Chrome’, as it will be known, has been built from scratch, is free and is open source.

Google’s has said it’s intentions for the browser are for it to ‘drive innovation on the web’.

• JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8 (faster javascript – open source)
• A process for each tab (So if one tab crashes, the whole browser doesn’t crash & better management of memory)
• Task manager to view processes (Allows you to see which website is using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing your cpu)
• ‘Speed dial’ home page comprising of your most visited pages
• Google Gears is built in
• Smart search directly in the address bar (aka Omnibox)
• Uses a ‘Chrome bot’ on the google crawling infrastructure to test it works against the most popular sites on the web
• The browser runs inside a ‘sandbox’ with restricted permissions to make it really secure (It cannot effect your machine or it’s processes)
• Private browsing mode
• Automatically checks against known phishing websites (These are available in an open api)

For the full low down I highly recommend you checkout Google’s comic they released.