Apparently not content to simply deliver your search results, email, appointments, news and documents, Google prematurely announced its Chrome browser after a mail room gaffe. While the official launch was not planned until September 3, a 38-page comic introducing and explaining Google’s Chrome browser was sent out to members of the media with some receiving it as early as September 1. The search giant says the Windows version of its browser will be available in 100 countries starting today. Mac OSX and Linux versions will follow, though no clear time line has been laid out.

Chrome is an open source licensed under Creative Commons (Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 2.5) which allows full non-commercial sharing with proper attribution but forbids derivative works.

At the heart of Chrome is an interesting concept that’s being called “sandboxing.” The idea here is that if an individual browser tab starts acting up or performs an illegal operation, just that tab can be closed down. In concept at least, this could mean an end to one rogue tab or hung Java script crashing the whole browser.

With more and more applications online, the Official Google Blog entry acknowledging Chrome as well as the aforementioned comic say it’s time to rethink the browser. “We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build,” Sundar Pichai, VP product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director for Google say on the Official Google Blog.

After the accidental early release of the comic introducing Google Chrome, it became widely available online. It is also available via Google Books.

As of about 2:30 Eastern time, Google Chrome became available for download here.