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This is unreal. I mean the Google Chrome debut, not the Sarah Palin nomination. The first hint of the latest Google beta came to me via a Wall Street Journal email tech alert:

Jessica E. Vascellaro and Robert A. Guth reporting for wsj.com: Google Inc. plans to introduce its own Web browser, the latest twist in its battle with Microsoft Corp. over key Internet technologies.

Then came a full two days of media buzz around the thing, complete with a, get this, leaked comic book that include real life characters (I recognized Dion Almaer and Chris DiBona before I read the captions.)

That was followed by the anticipation evoked by a count down clock on the official download page. "In 11 hours" it said.

I sat there clicking the "refresh" button on my Firefox 3.0.1 browser until "In 10 hours" showed up. Wow, a brand new browser, I thought.

The final download order came in the form of a tweet:

dshaw, 02:01 PM September 02, 2008: Check out: http://www.google.com/chrome/ Cranking up an XP VM to check out Chrome.

That's when I downloaded the thing and installed it.

I don't know what this means yet. But I'm going to do some real life evaluation of this browser in the next month or so. I went to the "Set program access and defaults" menu and made Google Chrome my default web browser, *and turned off access to IE7 and FF3* (and Safari3, but Sarafi3 refused to be turned off).

Expect a usability report in about four to eight weeks.