How committed is Google to driving Chrome adoption? They’re running TV ads to get people to try it out. Farhad Manjoo speculates on why people aren’t adopting Chrome, but not so much on why Google really wants them to adopt it. I don’t think anyone has really explained what Google hopes to gain by driving adoption of its own browser — and clearly, given the TV ads, they are very committed to this project.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s far too early to write off Chrome. Google needs to worry about winning over the alpha geeks. If they can do that, larger adoption is almost certain a few years down the road.

A beta version Google’s Web browser, Chrome, will be released tomorrow. It’s based on WebKit (the same engine used by Safari) and will feature a new JavaScript engine.

I’m kind of curious about the name. Is it a joke on the fact that the biggest difference between the major browsers these days is the chrome?

Is the new browser war between WebKit and Gecko (the Firefox engine)? I’m pretty excited by the renewed competition on the browser front, with Microsoft taking Internet Explorer seriously again, and Apple, Google, and Mozilla all competing hard in the browser market. (The fact that Opera continues to innovate and lead is notable as well.)

I’d also add that the heavy lifting on the standards advocacy front that has taken place over the years is what set the table for us to now be entering something of a golden age of Web browsers.

Update: John Resig on how Google Chrome will manage processes, and the implications thereof:

The blame of bad performance or memory consumption no longer lies with the browser but with the site.

Update: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Scott McCloud’s comic book announcing the browser. It must be nice to have the resources to do this sort of thing.