Today Google released Chrome, their much anticipated open source web browser intended to help drive innovation on the web. As the web continues to move away from web simple text and images, and into the more rich interactive applications that now drive the majority of our computing experiences, Google has completely reworked the architecture of the browsers of the past to meet the needs of today more robust user .

On top of the increase in performance, Google really focuses on making their browser more reliable and functional. One way they’re handling this is by equipping Chrome with tabbed session. Chrome treats each session and plug-in as their own processes, running completely independently of each other. These individual sessions prevent one tab from crashing the entire browser. Chrome even has a built in task manager that allows users to identify poor performing websites and selectively stop them.

Designers and Developers don’t fret; Google looked out for us too. Google’s Chrome is not another rendering engine designers will have to design for. Chrome is built using Apple’s Webkit the same engine powering Apple’s Safari and Nokia’s browsers, which means if your site look good in Safari, it should look the same in  Chrome. For the developers Chrome has a built in code inspector with some of the same basic features of Firefox’s Firebug.

Chrome also attempts to answer some privacy issues with the Incognito window, a feature that allows users to browse sites without saving cookies or appearing in the users browsing history, though websites will still be able to collect information about you.

The most notable features come from the address bar and homepage. Chrome’s home page is comprised of your top 9 most visited websites with your most common searches, and most recent bookmarks listed next to them. The address bar, now called the “Omni Bar” has a built in auto completing, drawing completion data from multiple sources including, your web searches, bookmarks, and browsing history.

Unfortunately Chrome is not yet available for Mac and Linux users, though Google is hard at work porting the application over.

For more information about Chrome features, check out Chrome’s feature list.