Chrome OS launches - but consumers have to wait

Google has launched its new Chrome OS operating system, throwing down the gauntlet to the market leader, Microsoft, which recently launched its own Windows 7 operating system.

However, if Google really intends to take a bite of Microsoft’s 90 per cent share of the operating system market, it is playing a long game: the average consumer won’t be able to use it until late 2010. Yesterday’s launch was really aimed at making the code behind Chrome OS available to programmers (OS stands for ‘open source’).

That is not the only aspect that makes Chrome OS an entirely different prospect to Windows 7. It is also free. But perhaps the most fundamental distinction between the two is that Chrome OS will be a web-based operating system.

That means users will access their programs, such as word processing software, in an internet browser. That internet browser is, of course, the similarly named Google Chrome – at least until the third party programmers get to work on the code and make it compatible with other browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, the market leaders.

In the short term, the only applications that will work with Chrome OS are Google applications – that means a Google word processor, spreadsheet, Picasa photo editor and so on.

Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management at Google, explained that each program will operate on a different tab in the browser.

"There are no conventional desktop applications, he said. "That means you don't have to install or update software. It's just a browser; a browser with