• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 3, 2008

The Web browser wars heated up Tuesday with the official launch of Chrome, Google's long-awaited entry into the market. Google said Chrome's goal is to do for Web browsing what Google's core search tool did for online navigation: make it fast, simple, easy-to-use and easy to adapt to. But the real goal may be to cut into rival Microsoft's formidable 70% share of the browsing marketplace, to blunt its growth in online advertising market growth, and maybe even to usurp its dominance in computer applications.

"We think of the browser as the window to the Web," Google VP-Product Management Sundar Pichai said in Tuesday's announcement, alluding that Chrome would be far more than a means of loading Web pages, but would actually be a new way for users to Interact with Web sites, as well as the "applications they care about."

Google was not specific about what applications Chrome would lead to, but it implied that earlier versions of Web browsers, such as Microsoft's various iterations of Internet Explorer, were designed for a much more static Web browsing experience, and that Chrome is intended to be a far more "collaborative" tool. Among other things, Google said Chrome would enable users to access email, various Web applications, edit documents, watch videos, listen to music, manage finances, and was open-ended enough to evolve with future applications.

The launch of Chrome comes a week after Microsoft launched the latest version of Internet Explorer, which contains new user privacy controls that some feel could curtail certain forms of online advertising. Microsoft has dominated the browser market since the mid-1990s when it usurped Netscape, but Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser has become one of the most popular new browser downloads in recent years, and now accounts for nearly 20% of the PC browsing marketplace. Apple's Safari still is the dominant browser for that operating system.

Chrome utilizes some of the open-source elements of Firefox and Safari, and it is being released in open-source code that would allow other developers to modify it.

As part of Tuesday's announcement, Google Co-Founder Larry Page alluded to one obvious benefit of Chrome's faster browsing capabilities could impact all online publishers, advertisers and agencies. "Faster browsing can translate into more searches," he said. "We would like you to do more searches."