So, have you heard the news sweeping the internet? Google Chrome was just released yesterday, it’s their step into the web browser world. It was rumored for about four years that Google was working on such a product, but was denied time after time. After two years of hard work this web browser has finally come to fruition. I’m not sure what you’ve heard about the open source Google Chrome browser, but I figured I would go through a brief overview of what it is and what it may mean in the future to all of us.

First off, if you are running Windows XP or Vista go straight to google.com/chrome, download the web browser do not pass GO, do collect this amazing beta product. If you are running a mac you can learn more about what your currently missing but will be able to download soon. Like most Google products this web browser is designed for the web developer in mind. That’s not to say that any normal non-programmer can use it, but what it means is that this browser is simple, speedy and efficient.

The user interface is very simple and pleasant to look at. It is what Internet Explorer tried to be; but with even less buttons than Firefox. It takes a lesson from Firefox with a handy bar which you can do a search from or type in a url. The homepage is a very useful page with the most recently viewed sites as screen shots, sidebar with history, and bookmarks. It is extremely handy and will have you wondering how you lived without it. Tabs are on the top which is interesting and actually very useful. The tabs can be arranged the traditional way and also pulled of into their own windows or moved around and added back into the window.

This browser is all about the speed. If you take away one thing about this browser it is that Chrome is fast, fast, and super speedy. One of the main reasons for the creation of the web browser was to speed up how you view web applications. Let me tell you, they did an amazing job! The browser launches in seconds and pages launch so quick, you’ll wonder what the other web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox have been doing all this time. It really is a marvelous work of computer science. For this alone you need to use this browser.

Another neat feature is the application shortcut option. You can make a desktop short cut out of many online applications like Google Calendar and Gmail. This will give you a simple click to an online application in its own window like a traditional software application. You can see now where some of the motivations behind building this come into play. The Google Chrome browser allows web developers to create an amazingly real application framework which allows for speedy responsive web apps and coupled with Google Gears, you can take a web application on the road and later sync the offline data. This starts to make the future pretty bright for all web applications and portable data. It also makes us less dependent on specific operating systems and frees up our data and ability to share data, files and projects.

In addition to running these sites and applications comes the questions on stability. This is another great feature of Chrome. It actually runs each window in its own thread and has a task manager which means if a tab or site crashes it doesn’t bring down your whole browser or other tabs. The task manager is great and even has a button for us “nerds” called “nerd stats”. It shows us nerds some cool stats about the memory usage, cpu usage..etc. Cool, geeky and oh so nerdy. Gotta love it!

As I have previously mentioned in this post to all you developers out there - this web browser is for YOU!. As Code Ninja Dustin Schneider, my fellow colleague and Guru Web Developer teammate says, “Everything you need is here. It comes with an interactive javascript debugger, element inspector (similar to firebug), and information about load time, cpu usage, memory usage per tab. View source is syntax highlighted with line numbers. Wouldn’t ask for anything more.”

What does it all mean? Well, as a beta application it is a start and a great one at that. It still needs some work especially with bookmark management and a Mac & Linux version. With the speed increase and minimal interface it gets the job done bringing you the best web application platform with speed and direct interface.

Try it out, test it and comment below about your experience. And let us know if you are a web developer or just a user.