Step aside, Trace Adkins and William Gibson.  The word Chrome now belongs to Google. Well, at least this week. Google Tuesday released its first Web browser, called Chrome, and despite the fact that nobody really needs a new browser, pandemonium has erupted. It started Monday, when Google leaked a comic book revealing details. Google Blogoscoped offered blurry screen captures from a briefly public video showing Chrome as if it were evidence of an alien landing or Angelina Jolie infant. As Rough Type points out, Chrome is "the first browser built from the ground up with the idea of running applications rather than displaying pages." Chrome thus is a further attempt to minimize the Windows desktop as an applications platform, says TechCrunch, and the cute comic was "little more than a coat of paint on top of a monumental hatred of Microsoft."

As Furrier.org puts it, the search war has become an operating system war. Back on the browser battlefront, Microsoft Watch figures the new competition may help Microsoft by killing other rivals: "Microsoft can thank Google for Firefox's demise--and perhaps Safari's, too." (Though Valleywag sniffs:  "No Mac version yet, hmph.") Mozilla (Firefox) boss John Lilly remains calm in his own blog, saying Firefox will persevere-and reminding readers who the good guy is: "Mozilla's mission is to keep the Web open and participatory...with no other agenda or profit motive at all."

What else is new? Security blog Zero Day says Chrome has beefy security like a privacy mode and blacklist-based blocking of phishing and malware sites. TeleRead, an e-book blog, wonders whether Chrome will be a platform for online books. But here's some advice: don't put on your paradigm-shift pants yet. Why Does Everything Suck? says the Chrome is non-news for Web developers, noting that Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6, which launched in 2001, still has 25 percent market share, so pages and apps still need to be written to accommodate that primitive browser. "Chrome has nothing to do with my 2008 or even 2009 challenges," the blog says. Search Engine Roundtable has a quick-poll asking whether Google will win the browser wars -- and "no idea" running about even with yes. Webware is live blogging Google's announcement.