GOOGLE BROKE into the crowded internet browser market on Tuesday with the release of Chrome, a product the world's most popular search engine is hoping to turn into platinum.

While a Google browser comes as a surprise to many, rumours had abounded for years that the search giant would eventually want more browser real estate than a small search box add-on in a corner.

Google has offered a free download for some time that supplies this feature for other browsers like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and it is standard on Apple's Safari browser.

But getting computer users onto a Google browser gives the company many more opportunities to link in its lucrative ads and offer users its many other desktop services, which include e-mail, word processors, calendars and other tools.

Like competitor browser Firefox - which makes most of its income off a search deal with Google - Chrome is an open source browser, meaning its code is freely available and can be accessed easily by developers who wish to create small plug-ins, or add on programmes, for the browser.

But analysts say Chrome's real threat is not to other browsers, but to operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OS X, because the browser contains a "Java engine" that will run software applications that currently depend on an operating system.

Chrome is a potential "Windows killer", according to influential TechCrunch.com blogger Michael Arrington. "Expect to see millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs," he said in a blog post.

While the eventual move to web-based computing - often called "cloud computing" - has been predicted for some time, Chrome threatens to accelerate the process at a nerve-racking pace for companies like Microsoft, long in Google's crosshairs.

"Google knows that the way to beat Microsoft is to become the operating system for the internet," Michael Masnick, chief executive of analyst firm Techdirt, said on the company's website.

However, the browser is still only in a beta - or test release - format and lacks many basic features such as the ability to run Java or Shockwave applications. And it cannot even integrate Google's own popular Google toolbar.

And as PC Worldnotes, by using Chrome, users hand over another aspect of their online privacy to a company already widely criticised for how long it hangs on to users' information.

But don't expect that to tarnish Chrome, at least yet. This week, the web world is talking about nothing else.