After eons of speculation stating that Google is secretly working on an OS, they finally are, except it’s not so secret anymore. Google has just announced the Google Chrome OS, which is targeted towards netbooks and, as the name may hint to you, mainly intends on providing you with a more web-integrated OS solution with easy access to Google’s vast and widely used online suite of services.

Google Chrome OS will be a lightweight and open source operating system that is going to be powered by the Linux kernel. It will run on both x86 and ARM chips. As more and more people are turning away from software and looking to the web to do more and more of their daily tasks, especially now with cloud computing and the ability to store your data on the cloud and access it anywhere, such as OS that is integrated with said tasks may come in handy for netbook users who need to do just this and don’t need the wide array of features provided by “competitors” such as Windows and OS X.

As stated on the Google blog, this will be a simple, lightweight browser specifically made to browse the web that is tied into the cloud so that your documents are synced and accessible anywhere somehow. Not much was said about the exact features that will be implemented in Chrome OS, but I’m interested in seeing what said features will be and how this will stack up to some of its real direct competitors such as Gazelle, Microsoft’s own attempt at the browser + OS fusion.

Source: The Official Google Blog