On the one hand, observers say, Chrome is an assault on Microsoft , but not in the obvious, browser-war sense. On the other hand, a number of revelations about how Google is using the browser raise substantial privacy concerns.

Indeed, they say, Chrome reveals just how vast Google's ambitions are -- and they go well beyond roughing up Microsoft.

Google vs Microsoft

For starters, Chrome is a "direct attack on Microsoft," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group, in an e-mail message. Even the name is a dig. "Microsoft Chrome Effects was the most ambitious attempt to transform the Windows front end, and it failed largely due to internal politics and an untimely disagreement with Intel ," Enderle said.

Chrome isn't about unseating Internet Explorer but a stab at Microsoft's fundamental life force -- Windows itself. "Chrome is intended to render Windows irrelevant by taking over the windowing system and allowing it to be platform-independent, breaking the dependency over time on legacy Windows applications," Enderle said.

A PC World article pointed out how Chrome is missing numerous features that users take for granted -- a drop-down menu bar, plug-ins and extensions, a powerful history search. But Chrome isn't about users, Enderle said. It's meant to be a "better front end for applications, not Web browsing," he said. "Chrome is a feint at IE but a flanking move on Windows."

Google vs the World?

The computer world is powerfully dominated by Microsoft. To fundamentally change that equation means, in Google CEO Eric Schmidt's estimation, not a power -sharing arrangement but the decimation of the empire. In the language of geopolitics, Microsoft is the Soviet Union. The question is whether Google is Russian leader Boris Yeltsin or Vladimir Putin.

In a piece for ABC News called "Is Google Turning into Big Brother?" Michael Malone posited that Google announced its new browser on a national holiday in hopes of making Chrome look like an afterthought. The reason? "Google's ambitions are bigger than most of us have ever imagined, and the company is now rich enough, and powerful enough, to execute them -- even if it means the short-term sacrifice of a major new revenue source." (continued...)

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