I had some people ask me what Google Chrome OS is so I decided to blog about it here and share it with those of you who also don’t know what it is or how it works. Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system based on Linux that was designed by Google to exclusively work with web applications and was officially announced last July. It has a minimalist user interface (UI) that closely resembles the Chrome web browser. Google Chrome OS is targeted for users who spend most of their time or do their work on the Internet and intended for secondary devices like netbooks.

To make it easier for regular users to understand how it works, the folks over at Google in collaboration with Epipheo Studios have produced this simple video that tells how the Chrome OS was created.

Last November 19th, led by Vice President Sundar Pichai and Engineering Director Matthew Papakipos, Google held a press conference in its Mountain View, California headquarters and demonstrated an early version of Google Chrome OS. Below is the video of the demonstration.

So what do you think about Google Chrome OS? IMO, its a great operating system especially for users who are always connected to the Internet and do a lot of cloud computing. Its also an ideal OS for netbooks and other portable devices because the hardware requirements are minimal. I don’t know what Google’s plans are but it would be awesome if they could incorporate a Google Gears-like feature into it so users could also use it offline.

As you’ve seen in the video demos, Google Chrome OS booted up in only 7 seconds! Another cool thing about it is that it consumes 60 times less drive space than Windows 7. Hewlett-Packard, Acer, Adobe, Asus, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale and Intel are some of the big named companies who are developing hardware/devices for this operating system.

Btw, if you’re a software developer/engineer you can play around with it’s source code which was also released last November 19th with an open source license under the name Chromium OS.

[image source: Wikipedia]