I'm not sure why the launch of yet another browser has caused such excitement. Perhaps just because it is Google and people are curious to see how far the search company will go to compete head on with Microsoft.

The first disappointment is that this is a BETA. Although it says so in capitals I have gone 2 clicks deep from the Google homepage and not found anywhere a warning that users who are not accustomed to testing software should really stay away. Betas are likely to be buggy and I for one tend to avoid them. I actually avoid most new software as it is very rare it does anything better than a previous version.

The first security flaw was found pretty quickly and involves the automatic downloading of a Java jar file which could potentially be malicious. This also exposed the fact that Google Chrome uses the same Webkit as Apple's Safari browser. Even more disappointing is that this so-called Carpet Bomb was fixed on Safari, so Chrome is using an older Webkit renderer. This will no doubt be fixed fairly quickly, but with Google being so popular this could open up another epidemic of a security vulnerability which had been fixed. To see a safe example of the problem click here to go to security specialist Aviv Raff's demonstration.

The second problem some users have already experienced is that Chrome crashes sometimes. This is due to an error in the protocol handler. This too, will hopefully be fixed soon.

One thing strikes me, that for Google having their own browser could be the first time that users experience the vulnerability of their software. Those of us who use adsense and adwords already know the battles between Google and click-fraudsters but I'm sure most users are oblivious to this. But if your Chrome browser has security flaws you can no longer blame Microsoft or Apple or Mozilla.

In contrast, search engines are a somewhat black art and users do not see different results as being bugs, just different algorithms. The choice of one's favourite search engine is down to experience in finding useful stuff. I personally use Google because can handle the advanced search features and I want the simplest of interfaces - I just don't care for Yahoo's portal site; I don't need it.

What I personally want from a browser is one that doesn't hog all the available memory. I have noticed Firefox does that too, though not as much as IE, but both are visibly slower if left open for hours. For example, if you close all the tabs in Firefox but leave the browser open and look at the Task Manager processes you'll see that the memory used has not dropped.

Anyway, I'll happily try Chrome once it is ready. Many people have said it is faster, but perhaps worth doing the above test, keeping it open all day and see how it handles memory.

Now, why don't Google create a really good word-processor, rather than everyone trying to make Word clones? Anybody remember Word Perfect? :-)