As the entire world has noted on this holiday, Google is releasing its own web browser tomorrow, called Chrome. I have one word: Finally.

As a former web developer, I cannot begin to convey my hatred of Internet Explorer. Sure, I bash Microsoft things a lot, but I really, truly hated IE. If IE6 didn’t make every task take double the amount of time, it came close to it. And I was still doing development when IE7 launched and we were all promised a new era of Microsoft web browsing. It was marginally better.

Now the launch of IE8 is approaching. Again, the new era hype is starting, but again, it looks like it’ll be something more of a marginal improvement – if even that. Microsoft used thuggery to shove Netscape out of the browser market in the 90s and once it garnered its 90+% market share, it decided to let its product go to shit.

Now because of all their proprietary bullshit, they refuse to comply fully with web standards. Yet still most of the world thinks it’s the best browser out there. They simply don’t know any better.

Chrome won’t kill IE, but I would guess that it will level the playing field even more. Firefox has done a tremendous job gaining market share over the years, but IE is still something like 75% of browsers, which is just unacceptable.

With more people buying Macs, Safari usage is creeping up slowly, and now Chrome, which also uses WebKit and a new JavaScript engine called V8, could help push IE closer to 50%.

Chrome’s key for me will be speed using Google’s web apps. A good chunk of my day is spent on one Google app or another. Gmail, Google Reader, etc. If Chrome runs them faster than my current browser of choice, Camino, I’ll use it in a heartbeat. (Of course it won’t be out for the Mac for some time, it’ll launch as Windows-only tomorrow.)

Don’t overlook Gears integration either. With Gmail’s recent woes, the discussion about the need for some offline support was brought to the forefront again. With full Google backing, Gears should be integral in Chrome.

Firefox was too slow (though version 3 is much better), Flock is way too slow, Safari is good but still has rendering issues on certain sites I use. Camino works great but I’d like some more bells and whistles. I hope that Chrome, given Google’s web expertise, will be the browsing best-of-breed.

Also it gets bonus points for having a logo that looks like a Simon.