Chrome OS: The new threat to Redmond

Last week Google announced in their official blog that they will be entering the Operating System arena with the launch of Chrome OS. If Microsoft is challenging Google in the search engine arena with Bing, then this one is Google’s reply to MS. According to Google, Chrome OS is a complete redesign of Operating System architecture. Its their attempt to re-think what Operating System should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Chrome OS is designed in such a way that a user will be able to connect to the web within seconds saving the bootup time. Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. Basically, Chrome os is a Browser Operating System with a new windowing system running on top of Linux kernel. The apllications that are used in the Chrome OS will be web applications. So developers need to write applications using their preferred web technology. These applications are standard web applications and that can also be run on other OS’s like Linux, Windows and Mac. The difference is that these web applications looks like normal Desktop applications under Chrome.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and Google is working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. So from next year Netbooks from Acer, HP, Toshiba etc. will be preinstalled with Chrome OS.

Lets wait and see what Google has come up with…