Chrome OS, Google’s newly announced computer operating system, is coming this autumn and promises to revolutionize netbooks and other underpowered machines. Essentially, the OS is a small, fast-booting platform whose purpose is to run a browser, and from there all the Google apps and other web services you know and love. But why bother? Your netbook already has a browser and access to Google’s applications. What could Chrome do for you and your netbook?

Cost

Netbooks are cheap. So cheap that a disproportionately large chunk of the cost is made up of a Windows license. Ever wondered why the Linux versions of netbooks cost around $50 less? Microsoft tax. Chrome OS is based on Linux and will, like most Google products, be free, bringing the price of a $500 netbook down by 10 percent.

Speed

Windows 7 runs faster than Vista on a netbook. Scratch that. Windows 7 runs on a netbook, period. But Chrome OS is designed to run on low-powered Atom and ARM processors, and web-based applications don’t require that much horsepower on the client end so it should be faster still. Better, it will be small. Google is promising boot times measured in seconds, not minutes, so battery life should also get a boost — it will be possible to cold boot instead of sleeping or hibernating the machine, saving precious juice.

Compatibility

Google says that “[Users] don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.” One of the big problems with using anything but Windows XP on a netbook has been drivers. Try installing OS X on one if you don’t believe us, or any version of Linux not specifically designed for your model. If Google can come up with an OS that can be downloaded, dropped onto any machine and then “just works,” we might just have the ultimate portable OS.

Portability

Netbooks are meant for the road. At home, a bigger computer is almost always better but when traveling, a netbook shines. Swapping between the two is a pain, though. With Chrome, you can bet that all of Google’s service — Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa and so on — will be built-in and have offline access via Google Gears. If you are a good Google Citizen and use all these services, you’ll never have to worry about having all your latest data with you, whether you have a net connection or not.

New Applications

With its web services, Google has been slowly duplicating everything that we can do locally on our computers. Almost. There are a few things that Google doesn’t do yet, most notably a video player and a music jukebox. Sure, there’s YouTube, but what happens when you want to watch something other than a skateboarding dog in a blender? There are open-source options: The awesome VLC Player has just reached v1.0, for example, and the Song Bird music player, based on Firefox, can even sync with an iPod. Both already run on some flavors of Linux.

Google may use these, buy them or even roll its own. One thing is sure, though: If Google can put out a whole OS that is as clean, fast and focused as its individual web products, the Chrome OS could be a revolution. A free revolution that could be making Microsoft extremely uncomfortable right now.

It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. 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.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

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. Google 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. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We’re excited for what’s to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.