Google Chrome OS to ship in autumn with "millions of apps"

Posted on 2 Jun 2010 at 14:18

The head of Google's Chrome OS project, Sundar Pichai, told reporters at the Computex show in Taipei that the open source operating system would be available on devices by "late fall", according to a report by Reuters. Devices shipping with the new OS will initially be tightly controlled to offer users a consistent experience: "We will be selective on how we come to market because we want to deliver a great user experience... on both the hardware and software levels," he said.

Chrome OS will initially be tailored to work on laptop PCs, according to Pichai. As it's centered on the browser, application developers will be able to use web standards such as HTML and JavaScript to create applications, and Pichai suggested that all web-based services would count as Chrome OS applications.

"Chrome OS is one of the few future operating systems for which there are already millions of applications that work," Pichai said. "You don't need to redesign Gmail for it to work on Chrome. Facebook does not need to write a new app for Chrome."

Despite being open source, Chrome OS will only be available pre-installed on specific devices from vendors who have partnered with Google, such as Acer, which announced last year that it had partnered with Google to launch a Chrome OS device this year.

Designed specifically for netbooks, Chrome OS is built for speed, booting up in under seven seconds. Chrome OS netbooks won't have hard disks, relying instead on flash memory for local storage and storing user content in the "cloud", i.e. on the servers of web-based applications.

Author: Barry de la Rosa

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