Thanks to some over-exuberant staff at Google, the cat’s out of the bag a bit earlier than planned on its new project: Chrome.

From tomorrow, Google will launch a beta version of its new web browser, which it no doubts hope will challenge the dominance of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and take chunks out of Firefox’s increasing popularity.

A Windows version will be available in 100 countries (presumably the UK will be one of them), and should be “streamlined and simple”. Features include separating each tab into its own “sandbox” to minimise the risk of web applications crashing the whole browser and provide better protection from malicious code, and a powerful “V8” JavaScript engine to “power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers”…