It was bound to happen. Ever since Google released Chrome there’s been speculation about them releasing an operating system (OS) to compete with Microsoft. Being the cynical bastard that I am, my initial reaction was joy about the flood of hype and fan fare there was bound to be just like every time a new OS is debuted.

Then the strangest thing happened; no one seemed to care. Overall, there was  a lot of tempered, practical and, even a couple, educated articles about the “event”.

Sure, a couple sites went kind of stupid, but that’s bound to happen whenever there’s a whiff that Microsoft needs to watch out.

Wow. So you know all those whispers about a Google desktop operating system that never seem to go away? You thought they might with the launch of Android, Google’s mobile OS. But they persisted. And for good reason, because it’s real.

In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google writes tonight on its blog.

But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?

And it’s a genius play. So many people are buying netbooks right now, but are running WIndows XP on them. Windows XP is 8 years old. It was built to run on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s. Google Chrome OS is built to run on both x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, like the ones increasingly found in n

Sigh…

Quite the ridiculous statement. Thankfully, there’s an excellent response on The Register that takes Tech Crunch to task while making some very good points:

When Chrome was first released, journalists loved the idea that Google was taking on Microsoft, but it just wasn’t so. Now that Google will be releasing an operating system, the Goliath vs. Goliath story gets a little clearer. Yes, Chrome OS will be competing with Windows in the netbook market, which is the a tiny sliver of the PC market. No, Chrome will not replace Windows in the years to come. Let’s all just calm down.

TechCrunch goes on to report: “Don’t worry about those desktop apps you think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss Office.”

Ah, yes. Corporate IT workers everywhere have to port decades of esoteric business logic codified into Excel macros to Google Spreadsheets, but the real problem is, what are they going to do after lunch? Have you ever tried to use Google Docs for any serious task? In the words of a true hacker, it’s like trying to build a bookcase out of mashed potatoes. The Microsoft Office institution will not easily be overthrown by a bunch of jokers writing JavaScript.

But it’s not just Office that will keep Microsoft’s hold on the PC market. Can you replace Active Directory with a web app? Is there a site I can visit to connect to my office’s shared printer? What do you mean World of Warcraft doesn’t run in the browser? How do I play a DVD in Google Chrome?

Keep whackin’ away on that Pareto Principle and let us all know how it turns out. In the meantime, I’m going to go play a few rounds of Counterstrike on my Windows-based PC, because the best that my browser can do is Tetris. I’m sure that HTML5 will bridge that gap any day now.

Indeed. It’s easy to forget that the computer isn’t a web browser delivery device for the majority of people. Sure, for the casual user, mom for example, the web browser is an important part of the experience but for the rest of the world it’s just a single part among many.