In its latest bid to ensure we'll all someday be working for  them after graduation, today Google has launched “Google Chrome,” their new open source web browser. Before I even say anything else, I’m sure you’re all scrambling to download it immediately so here’s the coveted link.

The browser is only in beta, so don’t expect it to blow you away right off the bat. The design is extremely streamlined, and very minimalist. There are now thumbnails for quick acess to your favorite pages and desktop shortcuts for your most frequented web applications.

The browser is theoretically competing with established giants Firefox and Internet Explorer, but no one is worried, according to Mozilla’s European president, Tristan Nitot:

"I'll take another example: just before Microsoft launched Vista, it invited us [to work with it] so that Firefox works better on Windows Vista. Because for it, Firefox being a top-tier application that was very successful - we now have 200 million users around the world - it could not afford to have Firefox run slowly on Vista. Therefore, it helped us improve Firefox for Vista. That's just the same for Google. It wants Firefox to perform well with its applications, that's for sure. Indeed, it even wants IE to perform well with Gmail and the rest. It's just that it has very limited control over this. That's why Google's been frustrated and it is launching this Chrome browser."

If I was him, I’d be a little more worried seeing that Google has proven capable of destroying everything in its path. Remember Hotmail? Me neither. I expect we’ll all be using Google Chrome 4.0 within a matter of months. And shopping at Google Grocery. And driving Googlemobiles. The apocalypse is nigh.