Don't have Google Chrome yet? Well, get with the program already! So far, the feature I like the best is the omni bar. In the webcast of the Chrome announcement today, developers called it the "psychic bar." I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but it is cool. Basically, the omni bar combines your regular address bar and the search box into one area in your browser. You can type in a web address or something you want to search for. But it's more than that.

After visiting Download Squad and using the search box just one time, I have the option to search DLS from the omni bar as well. I begin typing in the Download Squad address in the omni bar. Within a few keystrokes, I am told I can press tab to search Download Squad. It can be used on Amazon or any other place you frequently search for things.
Saves time going to the site and then searching. Chrome overall seems to be trying to save you time and put more functions in one place. Instead of going to Google (or Yahoo, or any search engine) and then typing in your search, you can do it all from one place.

Nice, but is it nice enough to make me change browsers entirely? Only time will tell.

On Sunday we watched a short segment on CBS Sunday Morning about Google. The company, 10 years old this month, represents the best of what came out of the dot-com bubble in the 90's. Today they are madly profitable, focused on their core services and yet, still crazy after all these years. Massages, naps and gourmet food? Why, that's the kind of hubris that brought down dozens of companies in the first boom, so what's Google's secret sauce?

The fact is, Google is known to the mass market as "how to find stuff on the internet." Their success, like most success stories, is wedded to a fortuitous series of events: the price of computers and internet access dropping like a stone and the democratization of page creation and monetization. That's a mouthful, for sure. Cheaper computers and easier, faster access made computing and creating pages within the grasp of more people. As more people came online, they saw ways to make money by generating content and running the drop-dead simple AdSense on their pages. From memes to spy shots, Google helped the new wave make their wee blogs fiscally sensible.

What all this brought was brand recognition. The average person uses Google as a verb now, and that really means something. Another happy coincidence was the emergence of mobile and mobile browsing. Now you've got a vector of adoption that can reach even more folks who merely see the home computer as a porn/game machine but use their mobile devices every day. So the brand is unquestionably huge, which brings us to Chrome...

As Brad reported earlier today, Google is launching the first beta of its Webkit-based browser, Google Chrome, tomorrow!

Details of Google Chrome were originally leaked by the Google Blogoscope blog, who received their press copy of the Chrome comic book early, and as a result Google has moved the date of the release up 24-hours.

There have been more leaks, with the google.com/chrome and gears.google.com/chrome sites intermittently displaying content. You can see screenshots here, here and here.

As for us, being the Googleholic's that we are, Download Squad will be covering all-things Chrome-related tomorrow. Here's a rundown:

• I'll be following the Google press conference and posting any pertitent information.
• We'll publish screenshots, screencasts and our general first impressions of the browser -- I'll be making the ultimate sacrifice and using Windows!
• Download Squad bloggers will be having a Talkcast of sorts to discuss Chrome, its implications and what it means for the rest o the browsing market.

So keep your eyes on Download Squad or our RSS feed as we jump on the Chrome-caravan!