Google Chrome: a pearl or irritating grain of sand?

Is Google Chrome a pearl or irritating grain of sand?

For some, Chrome seems to be the answer to their dreams. For other, another irritating grain of sand gumming up the works.

Google expressed their desire to do their part in stimulating a healthy eco-system in the browser arena so they created Chrome. 

Judging by the press surrounding Chrome and the quick succession of announcements by Firefox about 3.1, it looks like they’re on the right track…acting like a “grain of sand” to stimulate the market into creating

 pearls. 

Indeed, with the release of Chrome, Google has raised the bar in the browser market by making “tabs run as separate processes” a check list item in every browser review. The software teams working on the other browsers probably see this as a grain of sand rather than a pearl. 

For the end users, I think the jury is still out. If Chrome matures and becomes the “iPod” of browsers or “operating environments”, it will definitely be a pearl. If it turns out to be another “Google Answers”, like so many other irritating grains of sand, it will get washed away with time.