Google "announces" its browser, "chrome"

Google leaked a link to a "comic book" about their upcoming browser , "Chrome", a bit too early. I must say, it looks like very interesting project. Some higlights:

• tab oriented UI
• new tab opens with nine most visited places
  
• each tab runs as its own "jailed" process. So a crashing plugin, site, javascript won't bring down the entire browser (jay!)
• popups are constrained to their tab (i.e. no windows outside the browser)
  
• optimized for webapplications (this new browser is Google's OS!)
• based on webkit (like safari)
  
• automated testing against millions of sites, passes 99% of webkits layout tests
• privacy mode. A tab in privacy mode won't store any history or leave any traces on the computer
• it has Google gears builtin
• different kinds of malware protection
• Windows only at this point but OSX and LInux will follow.
  

Furthermore, it has a new "V8" javascript engine, which:

• is optimized for large javascript applications (like maps, gmail, google documents) in stead of small snippets
• fast, JIT-like compilation. Limi has some benchmarks.
• numerous optimizations in the VM
• better garbage collection
• can be used independently.

All of this will be, of course, open source!

I'm really looking forward to this browser - I will probably not switch from Firefox too soon (if at all) but I'd really like to play with this browser and see if it's as stable, fast and secure as they promise.

One thing that's unclear to me is what kind of extension (if any) Chrome will provide. Extensions is what makes Firefox hugely popular and they're still really hard to implement on Internet Explorer, Safari and most other browsers. It would be a shame if Chrome won't support something similar.