Paul Thurrott's coverage of the Google Chrome leak/announcement ends with the remark that "what we've really got here is an example of Google pulling a Microsoft: Creating an unnecessary me-too product that they can use for product tie-ins. All of the features here are present in existing browsers, all of them. So what does Google really bring to the table?"
The idea of opening tabs in separate processes has been part of Internet Explorer 8 since March, at least.
Web-apps in windows that don't have an address bar or toolbar are not just a decade old in Internet Explorer, they've been a pain in the backside for a decade. Malware writers love them. I used to use Proxomitron to force them to have obvious controls.
The thumbnail home-page is basically Opera's Speed Dial, and IE7 has had a thumbnail view for a couple of years (albeit it only shows current tabs).
Putting tabs over the address bar is the standard Opera view, and utterly pointless for most people.
Chrome's InCognito is already in IE8 as InPrivate Browsing, and was in Safari 3 before that.
Omnibar is Firefox's Awesome bar.
Auto-completion, anti-phishing and sandboxing features are all pretty old hat by now.
Google can't even think up a new name: Microsoft Chrome was an old tool that allowed "Web developers to add multimedia features to HTML using Microsoft's DirectX technology".
Additions and corrections are, of course, welcome ;-)
As with Gmail, Chrome may be a big hit if it's brilliantly executed, especially given Firefox's general crashiness and bad memory leaks (which, to be fair, used to be part of IE too). But if it's more like Google Base, Knol, Orkut, Froogle and similar rubbish, it may not catch on....
Update from comments: And the lucky winners so far (round of applause, please) are:
fred2: "treating JavaScript as compiled" (which should make Google apps run faster) djhworld: "You can drag out tabs into a new window (and back again)". I admit this is cute but I suspect I won't have much use for it. I'd rather be able to drag toolbars around. (Toolbars? What toolbars?) Me: the Task Manager that shows memory use, and is accessed very quickly by right-clicking the title bar. Love it. Every browser should have one....
There are also a couple of Jerk of the Day prizes but I'm far too polite to award them....
