The interwebs are abuzz with news of Google’s new Web brower, Chrome, which is being launched today at some point (it’s not yet available as of 11:45 a.m. PT).

The browser’s existence came to light a bit early when the Google mail room hit ‘send’ a bit early on a comic book written by comic artist Scott McCloud.

The browser, which is technically in a beta state, will be made available for Windows users later today. Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google, and Linus Upson, engineering director, write that Mac and Linux versions are on the way.

As for the comic book, it is composed in the same informative style as McCloud’s Understanding Comics books. It does a great job of explaining why Google engineers felt a new browser was needed, and how they went about building Chrome.

So if anyone’s looking for me this afternoon, I’ll be in the queue.

UPDATE: The download page is now live.