Google announces the Chrome Operating System

Google has created another stir in the technology community again with the announcement of the launch of their new Chrome Operating System.

Thats right. Operating System. Like Microsoft-makes-Windows-Operating-System Operating System.

The details are pretty sketchy, but here’s what we know so far…

• Its not out yet
• Its going to be an extension project of their already super fast Chrome Browser
• Its designed for to appear in netbooks (that is, small laptops without optical drives, meant for wireless surfing) near  (or far from) you
• It’ll run on your PC
• Google’s been working with a lot of hardware manufacturers like Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba (as of July 12th), to get their OS on devices.
• You’ll probably see them from the second half of 2010
• You’ll be able to use GMail, Google Docs, and a lot of other of Google’s tools via Chrome OS, brilliantly.

My Take:

That last point is significant here, and probably explains Google’s rationale behind working on an OS, after they already have Android (for smartphones, for now).

Now, we know that Google has developed a very rich user experience by making use of AJAX technologies backed by their own Cloud Computing servers all around the globe. Lets just simply say that they’re a big big Online only company. (Alright, I know, Google Earth, Google Desktop, and enterprise products are there, but Google still makes most of its money online, right?)

So it makes sense, that you would want to create the framework that allows the most direct interaction to all those web applications that you have created. And which hardware device is optimised for the web experience? Why, the netbook of course. In face, from their blog, they’re trying to design it so:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Get the ‘OS’, to run as lightly as possible, so all the real work will be online.

Some technicalities:

• It’ll probably be based on some Linux build
• It’ll be open source
• It’ll be free
• It’ll have Flashbuilt in (probably, since they’re working with Adobe too – see the list above)

In fact, I believe this blurs the defintion of the Operating System, as a simple interface between the Hardware and the User and software. This Google Chrome OS seems to be sort of a highly optimised web browser OS, a gateway to Google’s real delicacies: Online applications.

Delicious, isn’t it?

To find out (just a little bit) more, you can read their official introduction.
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Comment below if you have any questions or anything interesting to add.