It’s obvious really. If anyone was going to build a better web browser it would be Google.
Chrome is now available as a beta install for Windoze.
We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser
When you open tabs in IE or Firefox you are basically opening another instance of the browser engine, chewing up valuable system resources, and eventually resulting in crashes if rogue pages lock up. Chrome is the first multi-threading web-browser. It only needs one instance of itself to run – all tabs are threaded and prioritised, just as your operating system does.
Out of the box Chrome is slick, speedy and simple. One cool feature is a page of thumbnails showing the sites you visit most frequently. Chrome will allow Google and other developers to produce even more powerful and efficient web applications.
I expect this to be another nail in the coffin of Microsoft’s failed attempts to control the Interwebs.
The Dog's Bollocks 
“Out of the box Opera is slick, speedy and simple. One cool feature is a page of thumbnails showing the sites you visit most frequently.”
Fixed it for you… 🙂
The only issue with both of them is (as always) rendering and opening some websites. Since, you know, people have trouble working out how to create a webpage that doesn’t force the user to touch IE.