News has leaked that Google is launching an open-source Web browser, called Google Chrome. My five second summary of the browser’s benefits is as follows:

1. It operates like a multi-processor operating system, meaning that each tab on your browser runs by itself, and if one crashes, the entire browser will not crash (cool);
2. It visually shows you nine Web sites in your cache when you start to type a URL into the browser bar (also cool);
3. It has a lot of security features to prevent hackers from stealing your data (not sure how useful this is versus everything else out there);

Google has released a very long comic describing the application. My initial thought is that it sounds like this browser has some cool applications, but I also wonder what the folks at both Mozilla (FireFox) and Microsoft (Internet Explorer) think about this. Mozilla makes over $100 million a year from Google ads appearing on searches through the Mozilla browser; and Microsoft knows all too well how the world reacted to the bundling of IE with computers.

Which brings me to my favorite page in the comic – this one:

Ah yes, for the sake of competition! Too bad Microsoft didn’t think of this approach ten years ago.