Today (while I visited some of Niagara-on-the-Lake fine wineries including the very impressive Thirty Bench, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source, lightweight operating system initially intended for netbooks.
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. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
And where does this leave Google Android, you ask? According to Google, Android was designed to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS will focus more on people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. As a result, we can expect to see both coexist. We can expect Google Chrome OS to grow to include not only netbooks but more powerful PCs in the future while Android’s focus remains on those smaller devices found in our pockets.
Google expects that Google Chrome OS will be available on netbooks in the second half of 2010. It is already working with a number of companies including Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments.