Hot on the heels of the press generated over Internet Explorer 8 and their possible advertisement killing browser come this: Google is officially declaring all out war on Microsoft by releasing their own open-source internet browser.  It is called Google Chrome.  Google has some very interesting ideas about what makes a browser tick, and you can check them out in this informative and humorous comic.  You can download Google Chrome here.

I’m all for new technology, and I will definitely be downloading Google Chrome to check it out.  That being said, this type of announcement from the big G also makes me wonder where the future is headed…  It would seem that they are moving ever closer to becoming the company that ate the internet.

Jump back five years ago.  Internet Explorer had a staggering grip on the browser game, and only tech geeks and open source junkies had ever heard of FireFox.  Now, the “little Mozilla that could” is grabbing more and more share from Microsoft by the day.  With this in mind, it’s not too far-fetched to believe that Google could do the same thing to Microsoft with Chrome that they did to Yahoo with PageRank back in 2002.

The problem is this: if Google controls the browser, the search environment, the advertising on the majority of networks, and even the content on the search results through properties such as Knol, then who is policing them?  If they control the medium, it is not going to be good for anybody.  Forget about Microsoft and Yahoo, what about your average consumer?

What if Google could decide what content you can and cannot view on the internet?  This become a Net Neutrality issue very quickly when you talk about any one entity controlling the access the masses have to the net.  Just ask Comcast how they feel about Net Neutrality after their brush with the FCC.

Competition breeds innovation.   This is how Google became the behemoth that it is today.  The question is, who will be left to compete with Google?