Google's Chrome OS aims to kill Windows

BANGALORE, INDIA: Google on Tuesday evening announced that soon it would be launching its popular Chrome Operating System (OS) for various range of personal computers.

Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, engineering director in a blog post said that later this year they would open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

He also mentioned that, they are already in talks with their partners and they will soon be working with the open source community.

The OS would run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. The architecture is based within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. It would run all web-based applications automatically and as well support new application using any web technologies.

For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using favorite web technologies, blog added.

“These apps will run not only on Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform,” added the blog.

The company is working with various OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year.

Clarifying the difference between Chrome and Android, the blog said, “ Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks.”

It further added that Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.

However, it also agrees to the fact that there are chances of both the OS overlapping each other in some areas.