MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google Inc. is working on a new operating system for inexpensive computers in a daring attempt to wrest away Microsoft Corp.'s long-running control over people's computing experience.

The new operating system, announced late Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be based on the company's nine-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company disclosed its plans for the operating system shortly after an online technology news service, Ars Technica, and The New York Times telegraphed the news on their Web sites.

Google is designing the operating system primarily for "netbooks," a lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily interested in surfing the Web.

The operating system represents Google's boldest challenge yet to its biggest nemesis — Microsoft.

A high-stakes duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in recent years as Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.

Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring away some of its top employees and developing an online suite of computer programs that provide an alternative to Microsoft's top-selling word processing, spreaoperating system later this week when they appear at a media conference hosted by Allen & Co. at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho.

Despite its own power and prominence, Google won't have an easy time changing the status quo that has governed the personal computing industry for so long.

As an example of how difficult it is to topple a long-established market leader, Google estimates about 30 million people are now using its Chrome browser — a fraction of those that rely on Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts to develop open-source software to undermine Microsoft with relatively little effect.

The Chrome operating system will run in a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel — computer coding that has been the foundation for the open-source software movement for nearly two decades.

Google has already introduced an operating system for mobile devices, called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple Inc.

The Android system worked well enough to entice some computer makers to begin developing netbooks that will eventually run on it.

Google, though, apparently believes a Chrome-based system will be better suited for running applications in netbooks.

"We believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google," wrote Pichai and Upson.

Sauce: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,530580,00.html

That's useless right now, since there is a lot of light weight linux distros. This would be useless. You can just boot up archlinux onto a netbook.

Dont think it will be that big success?

That's useless right now, since there is a lot of light weight linux distros. This would be useless. You can just boot up archlinux onto a netbook.

But i wasn't expecting them to use the Linux kernel, good as it may be.

but you don't necessarily need the biggest market share to be a success.

You need that for it to be a BIG success.

If its supposed for netbooks it wont reach far, and even less if it will be aimed for net only, in MY point of view.

A succesful system needs atleast some offline capabilities.

Games devs support Google OS

A number of leading MMO and casual games developers have also been quick to support Google's latest move into the operating systems space.

"We are very excited by the news of the Google Chrome OS," Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard told TechRadar.

"Jagex loves the Google's spirit of innovation and "just get on and do it, without the hype" mindset that we also echo. I find itrather heartening to see the underdog threaten Microsoft's current dominance of this space.

"Jagex will certainly look to support this new operating system in terms of our games and also for use in house if it meets our security requirements."

I'll try it if it gets popular after the release and if it's compatible for most programs.

There are plenty of programs that work with Linux. But i did read somewhere that the suggests things will be written for it in web languages, or mark-up languages. That could either be a blessing or a curse, it's to early to tell. But does that mean that Google Chrome OS is meant literally? Like, an advanced browser that you boot up? It would be useful for just web browsing, but i wouldn't have it as a primary or only OS.

What I meant was that most Linux programs only work on certain distributions. If Google make lots of changes to their OS, then they're almost certainly going to break all the apps that would have worked on the distro it's based on (I'm presuming they'll base it on a certain distro), and I don't think Google will lose too much sleep over making those apps work again, because they're so focused on the idea of web apps. I may be wrong though, we'll just have to see what Google does with this OS.

Since they're trying to 'reinvent' the Operating System i doubt they would base it on an existing one.

I'd say it's to early to tell. It uses the same kernel but a different window manager, although i doubt they would release it if nothing worked on it.

I don't see this going far.

In fact I can see past the front that Google is throwing up with this.

A OS is the ultimate way to collect information which is how Google makes their money.

More information you can get about a user the more relevant the ad's you can put up and the more likely the person is to click these ad's

It's how Chrome works I don't see how this OS is going to be any different.

This thing is going to be a giant privacy clusterf***

I'm not too surpised. Just another attempt against microsoft.
Go Google!

Bandwagon? There are only like three or four major competitors in the OS industry.

And on the ads, good. Wouldn't you rather have ads that relate to you than pointless adds in which everybody is wasting money and time?

Bandwagon? There are only like three or four major competitors in the OS industry.

And on the ads, good. Wouldn't you rather have ads that relate to you than pointless adds in which everybody is wasting money and time?

But its actually not at all its own OS, its a Linux distro, so maybe it should be said as the Distro called Chrome?
I mean, what big deal is that you make your own window manager and maybe tweak the system, then Microsoft who makes its own kernel.
Google made the system pretty easy, but Android is also Linux.
Still, i would never say this a revolution as the newspaper around here said at the release...

But, a thing is how the system would be resulting.
If it looks very much like the basic Linux it would not be much interest at all from me in this.

I might use an emulator to see what it might be like, but I won't change OS. I'l just allocate 20GB of memory to emulate.