After keeping tech bloggers busy for Labor Day weekend, Google confirmed last night that it was about to launch a new browser, Chrome, based on Webkit, like Safari. Going very frontal with Microsoft for what is now the most crucial piece of software in a computer since we do more and more things on the web, from email, companies extranet, calendar, banking, social networking, spreadsheeting, word processing…

What’s gonna happen to Firefox if Google decides to pull the plug on supporting the Mozilla Fundation? Is the long tail of browsers long enough for Opera, OmniWeb, Flock, Safari with the arrival of this massive competitor? Expect highly integrated Google Services like Google Gears, a lot of Windows Blue® and hopefully, a browser reinvented from scratch, more adapted to what the web browser is today: an OS.

From Google’s official blog:

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done. We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path. We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others — and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.