Google Chrome as an Internet Explorer plugin

• • Browsers

I just encountered a quite mindboggling piece of news on the Google Wave blog. It seems they have decided not to support Internet Explorer at all. Not IE6, IE7 or IE8. Surprised? I sure was. What's even better is that to still give these users the opportunity to use Google Wave, they've built a plugin for Internet Explorer, that loads the Chrome browser with Google Wave inside it.

What? Load a browser as a plugin inside another one? I guess this is a real war after all? Who will build the first browser to load Firefox into Chrome? Internet Explorer inside Firefox?

Why? Well, now they don't have to care about Internet Explorer support at all. Felt that heavy weight lift from your shoulders? Suddenly large parts of HTML5, CSS3, and modern javascript, is available to them, with no backporting and performance tuning needed. Must be fabulous.

Now. Combine that with the possibility for the developer to choose when to trigger the different browsers. We're up for a whole new ride. You're invited.