The question Google must have asked themselves a couple years ago: Are the current market of browsers good enough to keep up with the needs of Internet users?

Apparently, Google believed the answer was a resounding no. It is easy to see why they came to this conclusion. Not that many years ago people basically viewed static pages, sent e-mail, and ordered a book on-line. Nowadays we’ve moved far past those initial needs.

Google believes that as the needs of Internet users have evolved, the primary tool we use to interact with the Web, browsers, haven’t grown with our needs.

“For how much the Web has evolved, browsers haven’t evolved that much,” says Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice-president of product management. “What we’re trying to do with is make sure the browsers are really evolving with the Web,” he adds.

And oh has the Internet evolved. People now frequent Web sites to manage their finances, run complex customer relationship management systems (CRM), to-do lists, create and build their blogs, manage projects, network with hundreds and even thousands of other people, and even use entire online office suites.

But Internet Explorer and Firefox were created mainly to just browse mostly static pages, not interact and use the Web the way some of us do today and many more will in the future.

So enter Chrome, Google’s new Web browser. It is a stripped down, lighting fast browser that was created to be able to handle sites (insert run faster) that “house” complex applications that are far more than just a static page with text and visuals.

Or in other words Google realizes the ecosystem of the Internet is, or has been changing for a while, and they believe Chrome can be the browser of choice to interact with it. And when you factor in Google’s aggressive move with Gmail and Google Docs, you can see how this makes sense on so many different levels, both directly for themselves and the entire vertical of online applications in general.

In my humble opinion a brilliant move that won’t pay off today or tomorrow, but could have huge benefits in the long term at this point most (including myself) don’t even completely comprehend.