Google announces an OS

You already know Chrome the search engine, now get ready for the Chrome OS! Google has announced the launch of a new project that should be ready for netbooks sometime between now and the beginning of 2010. It will be free and available to all for netbooks, notebooks and desktop PCs. Chrome OS is based on Linux and will work with a classic but minimalist windows interface. It is an open-source project so the source code will be available very soon.

Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson from Google outlined the principles of the new Google OS in the following terms:

"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"

They go on to say that their moto, which in a perfect world should be the moto of any developer, is: "It should just work".

Google Chrome OS will work on the x86 and ARM platforms and the company is working at the moment with various OEM partners to integrate it in as many of next year’s netbooks as possible. Google are putting the accent on inter-operability with other systems and on an architecture that is based on online applications. The fact that it is an open-source system is also an invitation to customization.