We reported earlier that Acer is going to be the first computing hardware manufacturer to deliver Chrome OS powered Netbooks. That’s indeed going to be a reality in no more than two weeks, if latest report from Venturebeat is to be believed.

According to folks at Venturebeat, they have confirmation from multiple reliable sources that Acer, the Taiwanese computer manufacturer will launch Chrome OS powered netbook(s) at the Computex Taipei show, which is scheduled to be held from June 1 to June 5.

As per very early reports, Chrome OS netbooks were supposed to be delivered by late 2010 so this particular news sounds tough to be believed as the first half of this year is yet to get over but then, we can understand why Google and Acer would want Chrome OS powered netbooks to hit market earliest possible. It’s the iPad that might be causing the worry.

With the advent of Apple iPad and growing interest of other hardware manufacturers in newly explored tablet computing industry, Netbook sales have already started to decline. Every advantage offered by Netbooks over laptops is well compensated by a tablet device such as iPad and the possibilities are much brighter in touch enabled tablet devices.

So, that could be the reason why Acer is on its way to unveil Chrome OS powered Netbooks in the first week of June. Anyways, June isn’t too far so the truth will soon come out.

According to some reliable sources, Google along with HTC, is working closely on a tablet running Chrome OS, the Chrome OS Tablet. As of now, rumors are still in its nascent stage as there’s practically no evidence behind this but the possibilities are looking quite certain.

As Apple Tablet is very much a certainty now(which was a rumor in 2009) and Apple has officially announced an event this month for launching their tablet product as well, the niche tablet industry is ready to get shaken up big time in 2010.

As reported by Australian publication, Smarthouse recently, Google and HTC have been working on Chrome OS Tablet for the last 18 months and have so far produced several prototypes of their yet-to-exist touch tablet. As Chrome OS offers a great way to get onto the web as swift as it gets, Chrome OS over a tablet sounds like a perfect concept actually.

Now when all of us know that Google is just about to unveil its own Smartphone, Nexus One , built by cellphone manufacturer, HTC, this rumor that claims that Google is on its way to launch a self-branded Chrome OS Tablet built by HTC makes absolute sense.

But there’s a question popping up in couple of curious minds…

Is Chrome OS Tablet a worry for Chrome OS Netbook ?

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s Google’s Chrome OS powering the machines, be it a tablet or a netbook.

But yes, Google’s supposed plan to launch its own tablet against Apple’s tablet might be a well planned move from Google to simply prevent Apple from reiterating the ‘iPhone act‘ again.

Apple’s iPhone is an extravagant smartphone and so is Google Nexus One(actually much better) so what’s the difference..?

iPhone dominates the smartphone industry and Nexus One is yet to even start selling to its prospective buyers. Why ? Because iPhone launched in mid 2007 and Nexus One is to launch in 2010. It’s the early advantage that made Apple iPhone a clear dominator in smartphone industry. Google would never want to let Apple eat up the Tablet industry single handedly, just like what it did to smartphone industry with iPhone.

With Google competing head-on with Apple in Tablet market now, the consumers will find it more comfortable to be able to have a choice between the two offerings.

We will track further developments on this…Stay hooked!

[via Gizmodo]

So here we have one exciting news coming from some trusted sources about Chrome OS. Google is in serious talks with a couple of Netbook OEMs to produce a Google branded Netbook running Chrome OS. Now, there’s no official word of Google about this news yet but multiple insider sources are confirming this.

When Google promised that Chrome OS Netbooks will be out in the market by fall 2010, it was presumed that multiple Netbook manufacturers will come up with Chrome OS Netbooks but now, it seems that Google doesn’t want to take any chance in launching its own OS and simply wants to ensure that Chrome OS Netbook becomes a Standard within Netbook industry.

It might be a case that Google branded Netbook may serve as the exclusive distributor of Chrome OS, much like Apple’s business model but this is just a presumption as yet. It has been Google’s nature(as what you can see with Android) to build the software side and let multiple hardware brands do the rest of the job and hence it would be a tough call for Google to go exclusive with Chrome OS.

There is another possibility that Google may become one of the many Netbook brands to offer Chrome OS. But frankly, no hardware OEM would like competing with Google on hardware front especially when the OS is built by Google itself. At worst, this might even happen but only if OEMs get terribly scared of getting out of business if they boycott Chrome OS in their Netbook offering.

Now that Google is making its entry at mobile hardware front with Nexus One (the Google Phone) along with Android, it is looking more probable for Google to come up with a Google branded Chrome OS Netbook as well.

As per the rumor mill, this Google branded Chrome OS Netbook might be sold with a 2 year data plan contract with a carrier.

So guys, whatever the case be, you better hold your plans to buying a Netbook until next Christmas. We bet, you won’t regret !

Source

We have been occasionally writing about the stealth OS from Google, the Chrome OS and have been trying to sneak into every possible information we can bring out about it. Now, it seems, this stealth OS will no more remain a secret as according to a recent rumor, Google Chrome OS will publicly launch within a week or so.

This rumor has emerged from TechCrunch, a popular silicon valley tech blog. As there is no official statement from Google itself, we can’t really call it a news but the rumor seems to be true.

It’s hardly been half a month since Windows 7 launch and Google OS is making the news again. It might be a long term strategy from Google to start rooting its OS as early as possible, especially when Windows 7 is getting a great response from the customers.

Starting early might serve positively to Google but we’re hoping it’s not way too early. Our anticipation is that Google OS is nearing its launch but a very limited launch and that too in a month or two(not in 5-7 days). We might be wrong but this anticipation seems more sensible and Google does believe in doing things sensibly.

Google Chrome OS is back in buzz again. And we’ve something critical to talk about. Although, there hasn’t been any official word about Chrome OS for quite sometime now, the web diggers (aka geeks, bloggers) were right on their job, trying to dig out any possible traces of Chrome OS and they’ve somehow found one out.

The clue belongs to Chromium web repository, the Open source project that serves as a backbone for Google Chrome browser development. DownloadSquad spotted out a mention of Chrome OS login manager, somewhere buried in the open source code of Chromium web repository.

As Chrome OS is supposed to be a Browser based OS, a general interpretation of the term Chrome OS login manager would mean an OS that operates on Single Sign-On (SSO) cookie, working for all Google services.

In simpler words, you will be required to login with your Google Account when you will boot up your Chrome OS machine. Once you login with your Google account credentials into Chrome OS, you will get access to all the Google web services(Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, Reader, Blogger, Friends Connect……)

It sounds pretty cool and absolutely perfect for a company like Google, probably the only internet company in tech industry that has in-house web based alternative to all major desktop applications and software needs. It also means that you just need to login with your Google account to any machine(home, office, friend’s) and you have your custom OS ready to be served. As all the services belong to Google, the overall compatibility will be immensely smooth.

But this presumption (which is most likely to turn true) that one must have a Google account to make an access to Chrome OS and use Google Chrome as the primary web browser for using any web service on Chrome OS has raised a lot of questions over the freedom of choice.

If somebody is not interested to work on Google Chrome(the supposed backbone of Chrome OS) but Firefox or IE or whatever else then ? Or if somebody doesn’t want to use Google Docs or Picasa but instead, want to use some other alternative software from a third party developer, then ??

Will Google allow other competitive software or services to get replaced as primary service in Chrome OS ? It’s a question that’s still to be answered by Google but we’re guessing that Google will choose to stay competitive than playing resistive.

Even when any user downloads and installs Google Chrome on Windows OS, Chrome first asks the user to choose a default search engine (in-built into URL address bar) and doesn’t just impose Google search on new Chrome user. It’s a competitive ideology that Google has always followed (so far) and we expect that for Chrome OS as well.

After the web crowd went abuzzed with the news of Google’s very own Operating System, the Chrome OS, everyone started talking about Google’s possibilities of taking on Microsoft in its homeground.

Ever since, this news broke out, tech bloggers and journalists started speculating over various aspects that are closely associated with Chrome OS and its possible success or failure in largely monopolised OS market.

Although there’s just one article written on Official Google Blog about Chrome OS,  tech journalist and blogging fraternity just can’t stop buzzing about Chrome OS, be it data security concerns or Google-Microsoft rivalry.

But something that’s been completely baseless about Chrome OS are those leaked screenshots rumors, that keep surfacing every now and then.(atleast for now)

First when the news broke out, a fake graphic designer showed off his photoshopping skills and cooked up a fake story, which eventually managed to make thousands of folks believe on the Fake Chrome OS Screenshots.

Quiet recently, another claimed screenshot (obviously fake!) of Chrome OS surfaced out, gathering thousands of eyeballs, once more.

Can you guess, how long will such leaked rumors keep rolling out ??

Until Google itself rolls the real ones out !

And the day is not far(probably by the end of this year) when we would get you the REAL Chrome OS screenshots and detailed specifications about the next generation OS.

Stay tuned !!

Google execs have been keeping sharp silence since the Chrome OS news broke out but the blogosphere is reacting just the opposite. Bloggers and news journalists are fantasizing everything they can, just to keep the Chrome OS buzz alive, whether the concerns being raised are relevant or not.

And right now, Google’s statement of building  fool-proof security standards in Google Chrome OS is getting over-exaggerated to a large extent by the online media.

The security pundits are whole-heartedly questioning Google’s claims of building a Malware-free Operating System. Few of the logical justifications of security experts are somewhat true but still, the actual statement has been largely mis-interpreted, making a mountain of a molehill.

This is the statement that’s causing the uproar…

And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Media has gone absurdly far that it has started relating Twitter security breach with vulnerability of Google Chrome OS. It’s fine that many of the official Twitter documents which were recently hacked, were hosted on cloud based Google docs service, but we reckon the skeptics missed out a point made pretty clear by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone saying

This attack had nothing to do with any vulnerability in Google Apps which we continue to use.

We do agree that no operating system can be 100% malware-free. We also agree that there may be even more challenges for Google while carving out a Web based Operating system, which is bound to be more open and would heavily rely on cloud based applications. But this doesn’t mean that Google’s statement about Chrome OS Security standards is waguely wrong.

One can better interpret the questionable Google statement as “implementation of never-before and highly resistent security standards within Google Chrome OS”.

Now, imagine an operating system, which is not completely fool-proof but has very rare chances of malware attacks and least vulnerability to viruses. Won’t you love such an OS ? That’s exactly what Google is eyeing for.

But there’s another hidden reason behind all these objections, being raised majorly by Security experts and Anti-virus companies. Suppose, if Google actually succeeds in building a Fool-proof Operating System then it will be one of the major highlights of Chrome OS in competing against Microsoft Windows.

And if, Google starts hurting long lived Windows dynasty of Microsoft badly, then it won’t be just Microsoft but countless of Anti-virus firms and computer security companies, who will be at the risk of going out of business.

The possibility is quite easy to realize. If Malware-free Google Chrome OS succeeds in stealing some 30-40% of OS market share from Microsoft within a span of, say 4-5 years from its launch then it will mean that only 55-65% market will actually require security experts or anti-virus softwares for staying Malware-free. This may jeopardise Anti-virus industry to a large extent.

It is analogous to a situation when everybody becomes healthy on earth and there’s a rare possibility of any disease to spread across, meaning no need of medicines ever. Won’t that cause whole Medical industry to go out of business.

This same sort of feeling is one major reason behind the whole controversy around the Google statement on Chrome OS security plans.

On the basis on a recent piece of information published on Digitimes where the speculated launch of Acer’s first Dual OS(Windows XP/Android) Netbook is being written about, many tech pundits are talking skeptic over the strategy that Google is following, concerned with their Windows killer Operating System.

Most of the speculations are circling around the reason for creating two different Google Operating Systems, competing against each other in Netbook sector. Few are arguing…

Knowing the fact that both Android and Chrome OS are built on top of Linux ,why couldn’t Google extend Android into Desktop OS market. Why Google want to recreate an OS after putting in so much of efforts into Android since late 2007 ?

There is nothing exciting in knowing that Android will be booting Netbooks as well. We reckon, it was a part of a long term planning by Google, much before Google Chrome OS was even conceptualised. Google’s Android Mobile OS was  supposedly planned to be a Universal OS, which would start off with Mobile handsets and extend upto desktops and laptops.

But Google might just realized that building an Universal OS (single OS for Handsets, laptops, netbooks, desktops) won’t be a realistic approach to cracking a monopolised Desktop OS industry. Android could well be a killer Mobile OS but building an OS for Desktops and Netbooks may require an enormous & dedicated efforts with tons of innovation from Google.

Not to forget what many android developers had been constantly admitting

Android platform has many known flaws and pitfalls as a Desktop OS and competing with Windows will almost be like a rock-climbing task without a rope for Android.

From another end, Google had started enjoying the huge and promising success of Google Chrome (it’s just over nine months since Google Chrome’s launch and there are already over 30 million loyal Chrome users),  and the idea of Web as operating platform, complimented by nascent but futuristic concepts such as Cloud computing and core Web based applications could have given birth to Google’s idea of building a Web browser centric OS.

This might be the reason why Google carved out Chrome centric OS, the Google Chrome OS, inspite of leading the development of Open source Mobile OS, Android.

Although Acer is scheduled to come up with a Dual OS Netbook carrying Android next month, it’s more than intuitive that Google will keep Android’s focus into Mobile OS sector only and take the tougher challenge of competing with Windows 7 with Google Chrome OS, starting from the Netbook industry.