What's very interesting about the Chrome OS model is that it leaves the doors wide open for competition.

I fully expect companies like Canonical (Ubunutu), Apple (OSX), and Microsoft (Windows) to have similar offerings on their OSs. What would be an interesting twist if these companies offered a mix of online *and* offline applications.

Also, there are likely to be many more online web-app stores. I can see Amazon getting into this game as well as new startups.