Google Announces Yet Another Open Source Operating System

Google has been making a lot of waves recently with it's announcement of a new desktop operating system. The name of this new OS, Google Chrome OS, reflects how Google sees the world, namely from the perspective of a web browser. As you may recall, Google Chrome is the web browser, developed by Google, that introduced a number of new concepts to the browser world. Concepts, such as tab isolation, that make the browser more versatile and the computer more Internet oriented.

Interestingly, the Chrome browser was only recently released as Linux native. Chrome OS however, like Android, is actually going to be a Linux distro itself. This means, after the relatively moderate success of Ubuntu developer Canonical in bringing Linux to the desktop of everyday users, we now have the heavy weight Google making a move that could finally shake up the desktop OS landscape.

Initially however, the focus of Chrome OS will be netbooks. Like the Chrome browser, the OS is designed to be fast, booting up in a few seconds, as well as secure, and easy to use. And it will provide smooth integration with Google's numerous web based services and applications, such as Gmail and Google Docs, which may be the primary motivation behind it's development.

See the announcement on Google's blog site for more information.