You’ve gotta hand it to Google. It knows marketing (better than Microsoft!). First, a comic book describing Google’s unreleased internet browser, Chrome, is “accidentally” released. Then Google responds with a webcast announcing the general availability of a “beta” or test version of the product. Journalists rush to get into print with the latest chapter of the Google v. Microsoft wars (journalists love conflict), touting Chrome’s features as described by the company with little or no testing. One reporter later reveals he has been testing the program for a week (so much for the accidental release). He still gives it mixed reviews.

So do I (see tonight’s Tech Talk report). Chrome has some neat features. In this early release, some features work, some don’t. It used to be considered unfair to review a “beta” but Google’s hype begs for attention. Besides, Google labels every product it releases a “beta”. Gmail is still a beta and it first surfaced in 2004! Chrome does have a simple and neat design, which I suspect competitors, Microsoft with Internet Explorer, Mozilla with Firefox and Apple with Safari, will copy. It also clearly performs faster than Explorer and on par with Firefox.

But there were some web sites I could not get to display in Chrome. I also have privacy concerns with the program. It has some powerful features which anticipate your moves and I wonder if your surfing history is being uploaded somewhere to make that work. Firefox has a similar function but it uses only local data. Microsoft’s latest version of Explorer, IE8, gives you tight control about where your history goes and the default setting in IE8 is, nowhere.

I tried to get some answers to these privacy questions from Google but its media contacts did not return phone calls or emails.

Why is Google bothering with the browser market? After all, browsers are “free”. Lance Ulanoff, PC Magazine’s editor-in-chief, says it is because the browser helps define the web experience and Google’s entire business is based on providing targeted information to web users. I suspect a little of Google’s ABM strategy, as in “Anything But Microsoft”, is also at play here.

A few million copies of Chrome were downloaded in the first few days of availability, which speaks well for the desire of web technology wizards to try new things. I suspect many individuals will try Chrome, they already download Firefox, which has been slowly gaining market share at Explorer’s expense.

But I think corporate IT departments will be much more reluctant to make a switch. Microsoft makes a great effort to satisfy the enterprise market, and they do a pretty good job of listening to the people who have to maintain populations of 10s of thousands of computers in a corporate setting. An enterprise running Microsoft’s Windows Server with Active Directory can use the “policy” apparatus to maintain great centralized control over the operation of the Internet Explorer browsers which sit on its employee’s Windows desktop computers. IT Managers are not going to give up that control by allowing users to install Chrome, Firefox, Safari or any other web access tool.

As for those who write that the browser wars are all about unseating Microsoft as the supplier of the most used desktop operating system, they simply don’t understand what an operating system is all about. Yes you can run applications in a browser. But the browser has to run on top of an operating system. To make a browser which runs alone, you’d have to write a browser which interacts directly with the hardware. That means writing a new operating system, not a browser!

Writing a new operating system is a massive task. Right now we have Windows, and Linux, which is actually free and still doesn’t amount to much as a Windows competitor on the desktop; and Apple’s Mac OS/X, which has been gaining market share but, running only on Apple’s computers, is unlikely to challenge Windows in any major way.

In truth, the biggest future operating system challenger to Windows may be Windows. But that’s a story for another day.