http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/08/g...ces-chrome-os/

This is wonderful. Now lets see what happens to windows and Os x.

Good times ahead.

I am betting on "nothing"

I guess it is going to be the "quick" os your computer boots into. For example, if you want to just read email, you boot into google's stripped down linux os. If you want to play Half-Life or do some photoshop, you boot into a real OS.

Well what happened to hotmail and yahoo mail. Almost all my friends and relatives switched to gmail leaving yahoo mail and yahoo messenger.

If the level of innovation is similar and it is free and open source... what would stop users from switching?

We're talking Google here. A company that have swayed people to using their browser, search engine, email, online calendar, online tools, etc....

I would not say that 'nothing' is going to come out of this. Google is one powerful company.

Program Compatibility.

Unless the new Google OS can run Windows and Mac programs just as fast, or can actually run them, as their respective OS's can, THEN I could see that happening, but as we've seen with other OS's, namely Linux, it won't happen. Linux is free & open source, but you don't see a HORDE of people switching over to Linux. Even if backed by a big company like Google. Make Windows/Mac/Linux programs all run under one OS and you will rule the OS world.

Here you go, taken from the Google Blog itself:
Link:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/...chrome-os.html

Jesse~

I believe they stated that they are targeting netbooks, so I think that long-term what we'll see is a focus on more and more cloud applications (google docs, calendar, etc). That will both reduce the requirements for applications to be run on the device and be able to make the devices even more 'lite' and inexpensive.

An OS that have that as a focus, maybe with on-screen widgets for updates, etc, could be very interesting.

I don't think the intent for this OS is to compete toe-to-toe with Windows and OSx as a desktop/laptop OS where you actually need to do some local processing.

Seems like a good thing for the Crunchpad!

Heh. With a netbook OS, and a phone OS... wonder how Nokia is going to counter this.

This is simply a framebuffer Chromium WRT put on a linux probably with sandboxes and user access only to home. Some users want that, some don't - its as simple as that.