Google gets more social and also tries to take over the client side

Google has been adding more social features to Blogger lately - first it was an enhanced blog list that has "mini aggregator" features, now they've added a social network based around blogs - you can become a blog follower, and blogs can display the list of their followers - kind of like MyBlogLog.

In addition to these relatively minor tweaks, Google has a major announcement, which is a new web browser, Google Chrome, which should be available today (September 2, 2008) on Windows only.  Google positions it as a more modern, applications-friendly browser.  I get a little worried, and there are overtones of Microsoft, at a single organisation having so many sevices, from total domination of the web search space, through various web tools like documents and blogs, to desktop applications like Earth, Picasa (for photos), and now a web browser.

The List of Google products on Wikipedia goes on for something like 10 screens on my large monitor.

That being said, if Safari, Firefox and now Chrome can force the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, to be more standards-compliant in version 8, that's all to the good.  (Note: Safari and Firefox both run on Mac and Windows.)