Just saw this note: Google has officially announced they’re taking over the world developing a web browser (based on WeKit, no less).  They announced the browser in comic book form (drawn by Scott McCloud no less).

My first reaction was just annoyance: great, another web browser.  We’ve got too many as it is, and all of them generally work pretty well.  I don’t consider any of them perfect: Firefox has great plugin support and excellent rendering, but is slow; Safari is lean and mean with excellent rendering, but doesn’t have the plugins Firefox does.  I prefer Safari for most of my browsing, as speed is a major factor, but I still use Firefox regularly.

My second reaction to the Google browser (named Chrome, btw) was intrigue: the WebKit rendering engine is very fast (it’s what Safari uses) and seeing it in more uses can only improve further adoption.  Imagine a Firefox alternative: one that’s fast and lean, with excellent rendering, and a wide community of plugin support.  That would be my perfect web browser.

The only major issue I see is with the “omnibox” address bar.  It’s designed to give search tips and suggestions on other web pages you might like in addition to being an address bar.  I’m skeptical.  Really, it sounds like the Google Suggestions feature of search results, which I’ve never been a fan of (sure it’s nice when I have a typo, but typically I meant what I said).  I wonder, also, how they determine those “suggestions”: I wouldn’t be surprised if it was based on AdWords (top bidder for “digital camera” gets suggested by the omnibox).  Hopefully this “feature” can be turned off when the browser is released.

All in all, it’s an intriguing concept.  It’s no surprise they are doing a lot of this as open-source, though I wonder exactly what the community’s reaction will be (Firefox is the browser for OSS folks).  If Google wants to spend their seemingly limitless resources building yet another browser, fine with me.  If it’s better than both Firefox and Safari (a very tall order), I’ll switch.  But I’m not quite ready to buy into the hype just yet.