Google have announced news of Chrome, a new open source Webkit-based browser. The central premise is that it has been designed from the ground-up to work efficiently with the demanding web applications of today’s web. In particular, it features a JavaScript engine called V8 which can utilise multiple processes, as opposed to the single-process engines that power Firefox and Safari.

As Google are emphasising performance, it will be interesting to compare their efforts with Safari’s new SquirrelFish JavaScript engine.

Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project