Today was Labor Day–and boy, did the blogosphere labor at talking about Chrome, Google’s new Web browser. Today’s the last day we can do it without having seen the thing; a beta goes up Tuesday.
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(UPDATE! I’m conducting a poll about Chrome–please go here to take it, and to get a recap of all of Technologizer’s Chrome coverage.)

Google has posted an official online version of the Scott McCloud comic book introducing Chrome, its new browser, and the cover sports the Chrome logo. The logo reminds All Things Digital’s John Paczowski of a favorite gadget of the past, but I was also reminded, less literally, of a prominent logo of the present:

No, the Chrome and Windows Vista logos are not true twins, but they’re both round and shiny, with the same color scheme–red, green, yellow, and blue. (Okay, looking at the Vista logo, that’s more of an orange than a red, but close enough.) If you’d told me that the Chrome logo was what Microsoft had come up with for Windows Seven, I’d have believed you.

Microsoft has long used the colors as shorthand for Windows and related products such as Office. But I didn’t draw any immediate association between the Chrome logo and Google branding in general until I realized that it uses the same colors as the Google logo:

On some level, it probably makes sense for the Chrome logo to look a bit like the Windows one. Much of the punditry concerning Chrome is looking at it as a threat not to Internet Explorer so much as to Windows itself–a platform for Web-based applications that might, over time at least, do some of the things that we expect an operating system to do at the moment. You gotta wonder whether it’s just a coincidence that Chrome is launching first on Windows, or whether Google is in fact a lot more interested in introducing Chrome to Microsoft customers than to Mac fans or Linux types. (Of course, it’s more likely that there’s nothing nefarious going on: If most of the world uses Windows, it’s completely logical to get the Windows version of Chrome out first.)

Meanwhile, as I was writing this post, I was watching MSNBC coverage of Hurricane Gustav out of one corner of my eye–and happened to see an ad for Alli, a weight-loss products. Its logo looks like this:

And I just remembered the logo for Zoho, one of my favorite suites of Web-based apps:

Popular color scheme, huh?

(UPDATE! I’m conducting a poll about Chrome–please go here to take it, and to get a recap of all of Technologizer’s Chrome coverage.)

I may have a lot of questions about Chrome, Google’s browser, but this I know already: Hiring the wonderful cartoonist Scott McCloud to draw a comic book explaining it all was an inspired idea. However, the comic as posted at Google Blogoscoped runs to 38 fairly dense pages, with lots of detail aimed at developers. And that site is having trouble keeping up with the interest–the pages were unavailable a few minutes ago.

So here (after the jump) as a public service is a condensed version of the comic. I’ve tried to keep most of the facts that are of interest to us folks who just use browsers rather than develop for them, and have therefore eliminated about 75 percent of the comic. What’s left is still very, very interesting, and Google is now confirming that the Windows version of Chrome will be available for test driving tomorrow…

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(UPDATE! I’m conducting a poll about Chrome–please go here to take it, and to get a recap of all of Technologizer’s Chrome coverage.)

Four years ago, I blogged about rumors that Google was working on a Web browser. I found ‘em intriguing, as anyone would, but no such browser ever appeared, and Google became an enthusiastic Firefox booster. The blogosphere pretty much stopped pondering the possibility of a Google browser, and so did I.

Today brings news that the rumors were apparently premature, not wrong: Google Blogoscoped has published an amazing comic book by Understanding Comics’ Scott McCloud introducing Chrome, Google’s browser. (UPDATE: I’ve condensed the comic into a highlight reel.) Over at All Things Digital, Kara Swisher says that Chrome may be formally announced as soon as tomorrow. (UPDATE: Kara dropped me a note to say she’s confirmed Chrome will arrive on Tuesday.) (EVEN FURTHER UPDATE: The Google Blog now says that Chrome will be available for download tomorrow; it’s Windows-only at the moment, but Mac and Linux versions are in the works.)

Earlier rumors of a “Gbrowser” had it as being based on Mozilla, as Firefox is, but the comic book says that Chrome is built on top of Webkit, the browser platform that also serves as the basis for Apple’s Safari. Chrome has a highly tab-centric user interface, advanced memory management to prevent the browser from getting bogged down as you open up tabs, a fast JavaScript virtual machine, sandboxing to prevent malware from doing damage to your PC, built-in Gears for offline applications, a framework for plug ins, and more. I’ve never tried to judge a software product by assessing a comic book about it before, but it’s clear that Chrome is an ambitious attempt to launch a truly new Web browser–not a rebranded version of Mozilla or a me-too clone of anything else that’s out there.

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