Jack Flack is normally quite suspicious when a supposedly accidental leak leads to wide, mostly positive coverage. Particularly about a new product. And particularly on public holiday that ensures little competitive news on the business pages the next day.

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But the Google leak felt like a genuine miscue, detected only because Kara Swisher’s Weber apparently has a 3G card.

What makes it seem like a genuine mistake? Well, while the company moved quickly to confirm the reports, it was not prepared to make the new browser downloadable, thus squandering the full benefit of the coverage.

The launch confirms that the war for the supremacy in the next tech era is fully on. Just as Microsoft cannot afford to have Google operate virtually uncontested in search, nor can Google afford to have Microsoft operate virtually uncontested in browers.

Here’s the parse.

Google: At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.”

Translation: Outside Google, it’s sometimes misheard as “launch early and dominate.”

Google: While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well!

Translation: Heh, heh, heh. Even our mailroom guys are go-getters.

Google: As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome.</p?

Translation: The propellerheads thought it was far more interesting than Gustav or Bristol.

Google: As we believe in access to information for everyone, we’ve now made the comic publicly available — you can find it here.

Translation: We won’t try to stop you from reading our promotional material.

Google: We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

Translation: No, we are not simply testing the waters. It’s a full-blown launch. Game on.

Google: So why are we launching Google Chrome?

Translation: So why did it take this many years for the rumor to become true?

Google: Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

Translation: Because we believe we cannot allow Microsoft to operate in any meaningful business segment uncontested.

Google: All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser.

Translation: And we hate having to use anything that isn’t ours.

Google: Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there.

Translation: It was either that, or start a home-made jewelry business.

Google: 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.

Translation: We’re still not sure how to clearly differentiate our browser.

Google: On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple.

Translation: It may look like just another rental sedan, but wait till you see under the hood.

Google: To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters.

Translation: Most people are hardly conscious of the default choices they make.

Google: It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Translation: If you like our other stuff, you’ll like this, too.

Google: Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better.

Translation: It’s a “foundation.” We promise it will do a lot more later.

Google: By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

Translation: Now how much would you pay?

Google: This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done.

Translation: Please don’t try it on day-one, be unimpressed, and never reconsider it again.

Google: We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

Translation: There will be problems. We’ll work them out.

Google: We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path.

Translation: We’re all about choice… at least in businesses where we don’t have a presence yet.

Google: We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others — and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

Translation: Yes, we’re going hurt the smaller browsers more than IE, but we promise to be gentle as we do it.

Google: The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

Translation: We love choice. Have you heard?

Google: So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We’ll post an update here as soon as it’s ready.

Translation: By then we should be done waterboarding the guy who accidentally pushed the button.

Google: *Update 3:30 p.m.: We’ve added a link to our comic book explaining Chrome.

Translation: We use comic books. Who says we’re menacing?