Google, whose Chrome can claim all of 2.8% of the browser market, has come up with an open source plug-in that runs Chrome inside Microsoft's still dominant Internet Explorer. How's that for brass.

It calls the thing Chrome Frame and says it works with IE6, 7 and 8 on Vista and XP SP2, but it's really supposedly targeted at the eight-year-old IE6 mandated by many companies.

As subversive as it sounds, InformationWeek says, most web pages won't respond because they need a meta-tag using the X-UA-compatible header.

It also reportedly louses up IE though when it does work it's way faster.

Some think its purpose may be to lead into Google Wave, the company's communication and collaboration tool, due out in preview next week, that's supposed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki and social networking but gags on IE.

Beta News figures it's a way to get more site developers to target Chrome and its WebKit and might be a frontispiece for Google Apps, and so a way to more market share. But it wonders if "someone licensed to produce add-ons for a product may market an add-on that actually contains the competitor of that product, in essence or in its entirety."