Google is making a noise in announcing a new project – the Google Chrome Operating System in its effort to venture into the world of operating systems alongside the giant Microsoft, Mac OSX from Apple, Fedora and Ubuntu from the open-source community. The new operating system attempts to challenge the dominance of Microsoft’s Windows system.

The Google Chrome OS (GCos) is now under development and will be an open-source, lightweight operating system that will be targeted toward netbooks – the smaller, no-frills, low-cost version of laptops. Netbooks are Atom- powered mini-computers such as ASUS EEEPC, MSI Wind and so on.

The new Google Chrome Operating System will be running on top of a Linux kernel and as Google announced it will be absolutely free as it will be open-source like Fedora and Ubuntu.

Google already has an existing operating system with a moniker “Android” which was designed to work across a variety of devices from phones, to set-top boxes to netbooks. If you want to give Google Android a try without buying a T-Mobile G1/G2/G3 or netbook, you can download a LiveCD disc image of the “Android” from the internet. Just burn the image to a disc, insert it in your CD or DVD ROM drive, reboot your computer and let it boot from the CD or DVD ROM drive so that you can check out Android without installing it or affecting any files on your PC. The image was also tested working on Virtual Machine, VirtualBox and VMware platforms.

The Google Chrome Operating System is targeted for people who spend most of their time on the internet, and is being designed to power computers ranging from netbooks to full-size desktop systems.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key factors of the new Google Chrome OS. The new OS will be designed to be fast and lightweight and to startup and get you on the web in a few seconds. The user interface will be minimal and as what they did in Google Chrome browser, they will be going back to the basics and completely redesigning underlying security of the new Operating System so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.

I was able to test and use different distributions of open-source operating systems that are already available. Each one has its weaknesses and strong points. Google has a lot of work to do and will definitely need a lot of help from the open-source community to realize their vision.
This will create a lot of hype, but it will surely take some time before we see the new Google Chrome OS running on netbooks. Let’s wait and see what Google has to offer with this new Operating System. It’s going to be a tough job for Google, but let’s see if they will keep their word.

Google has plans to release their free open-source operating system during the second half of 2010.