On Tuesday, Google launched its latest innovation: a new open-source browser intended to create a better Web experience. Chrome is now available in more than 40 languages for the Windows operating system .

Flanked by promises on one side and hype on the other, Chrome took one percent of the global browser market within a day of launch, according to Web traffic-analysis company StatCounter.

"This is a phenomenal performance," said Aodhan Cullen of StatCounter. "This is war on Microsoft , but the big loser could be Firefox." StatCounter's analysis also revealed that Internet Explorer holds 70 percent of the global browser market, followed by Firefox with 22 percent.

A New Approach To Browsing?

Firefox isn't worried, according to blog posts from Mozilla's CEO welcoming Chrome to the competitive browser landscape. Chrome does offer some new takes on the browsing experience. Chrome combines the search and address bar, and when users open a new tab they'll see a page that includes snapshots of their most-visited sites, recent searches, and bookmarks.

What's more, each browser tab operates as a separate process. By isolating tabs, Google said, if one tab crashes or misbehaves, the others remain stable and users can continue working without having to restart the browser. Google also built a new JavaScript engine, V8, which not only speeds up Web applications but enables a whole new class of applications that can't run in other browsers, according to the search titan.

"While we see this as a fundamental shift in the way people think about browsers, we realize that we couldn't have created Google Chrome on our own," said Linus Upson, director of engineering at Google. "Google Chrome was built upon other open-source projects that are making significant contributions to browser technology and have helped to spur competition and innovation."

'Launch Early and Iterate'

Beyond admitting it couldn't have created Chrome on its own, Google is also admitting Chrome is far from finished. Google's philosophy is "launch early and iterate." But is that the best approach in a market that recently saw Apple launch a MobileMe product that wasn't quite ready for prime time? Could this backfire on the search titan?

One key difference between Apple and Google is that Google admits Chrome is a work in progress. Still, that doesn't mean the new browser going to take over the market overnight, according to Greg Sterling, principal analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence. Firefox has been on the market for years and has yet to break the 25 percent market penetration threshold despite its popularity.

"The new cycle is always the same. There's a Google product launch or an anticipated product launch. Then the question comes about whether or not the product will kill the incumbent in that market. Then very often the product doesn't quite live up the hype," he said. "Google has good products, but they are uneven. They are not equally perfected when they are released. We'll have to wait and see with Chrome."