Google - The OS re-defined...

So finally after all the rumors, speculation and denials - it’s out there in black and white - Google has announced the Google Chrome OS . This has led to a flurry of speculation of course the biggest being the impact on Microsoft (check out this cartoon by Federico Feini - :-) ) The details are :-

1. It would be a custom version of the GNU/Linux kernel.
2. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.
3. It would initially be targeted for use in netbooks.
4. It is different from the Android Mobile OS which was designed to target various devices (and form-factors) from phones and set-top boxes to netbooks. The Google Chrome OS would be for people that spend a lot of their time on the internet and will target power computers.
5. Plan to release in the middle of 2010.
6. It would be open-source so expect code for developers to play sometime soon.

I am for one am going to follow this with much interest and keep my fingers crossed that it works out. If this is anything like Google Chrome - I would be willing to install it and give it a fair shot at becoming my default OS. that being said there is still a long way to go and quite a bit of competition too - especially given that it’s going to be a flavor of Linux, which we know does not suffer from a lack of flavors :-)

I noted in a post at the beginning of the year that Google had pulled the plug on several projects. It was named Google hunkers down.

Well it looks like that was just a breather - a clearing of the slate for the big guns - Google is back !!

Oh and by the way - Google Apps (GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and GTalk) is out of beta :-) This seems more to satisfy the paying customers than any new release of functionality :-)

PPS :