Google taking its talents to the desktop with Chrome OS, Cr-48 notebook revealed

Now that Google has dominated the web search and advertising markets and expanded into a successful mobile OS strategy with Android OS, it is setting its sights on something bigger, The desktop.

Until now, the Chrome OS project was considered another funky exploration from the Google Labs. It was a big "what if scenario" that married the concept of cloud-computing and a web browser as the only components one would need for personal computing. Now out of the skunkworks and into the mainstream, the Chrome OS is being realized as a competitor to Windows, Mac and Linux.

We tested a very early build of Chrome OS earlier this year and while it seemed to work well, we felt it was really basic and not unlike the Linux OS one would find in early model Asus EeePC's. The way it works is that the OS is the browser so you are presented with a webpage and you can run different web apps which appear in the form of tabs (just like pages in tabbed browsing). All of your info is stored on the web real time, which means if you lose your Chrome OS computer, you can get up and running on a new one in no time. The benefits are speed, efficiency and low cost since the software isn't licensed a la Microsoft and the hardware with reduced components is cheaper.

The downside is that Google owns or at least manages all your data and should the cloud go down or for any reason be inaccessible, then you have no way of getting your data. There's also the limitation of needing to work offline but I am sure they will find a way to address this.

Google's other bit of news is that they been working on refining Chrome OS and they have even outed a notebook for their pilot program.

The Cr-48 Chrome notebook is slate-black, sports a 12-inch screen and a full sized keyboard but doesn't have a hard drive since it will interface completely with the cloud and run web applications. Google announced a pilot program for interested testers of the Cr-48  and while this is open to users based in the US only, it should be able to help them execute a dry run for Chrome. As basic as it looks, we have to say the Cr-48 is a really good looking notebook and just the right size. It looks a lot like a smaller black MacBook except there are no logos on the enclosure.

For certain types of users, like enterprise businesses or schools who need to manage a large lot of PCs, Chrome OS makes perfect sense because they can control all the units through the cloud. If individual notebooks fail, they don't even have to clone drives or run backups, they simply sign into an account and everything appears on a new machine.

What does Chrome OS mean to Microsoft, Apple and Linux? Believe me when I tell you that it will be a competitor in the OS space. Right now it is just a curiosity, a novelty in beta but that's the Google credo for getting their products out there. 

With the Google search they were a small player in a big sea of search engines (remember Inktomi, AltaVista, WebCrawler, Mamma, Lycos and Ask), now Google is now the top dog.

With the Android OS, they weren't taken seriously and were initially considered a cheap copy of the iPhone but judging from the surge in sales of Android devices, they've now become a major player.

Chrome browser is now the third most popular browser and it has managed this in roughly two years. Chrome OS will be just as aggressive. Microsoft and Apple should be a little bit concerned, specially since the thrust for Chrome OS extends into hardware and what looks like affordable notebooks (reportedly coming from Samsung and Acer by Summer 2011). Google also announced a web store for Chrome (days away from an expected web store announcement by Apple) which is another emerging trend. Companies will push the web sales model for software. Microsoft already sells Microsoft Office online via download so its just a matter of time before everyone else jumps on this bandwagon.

Chrome OS, good idea or not, looks like it is here to stay. We think it will be successful and will grab market share if the hardware is affordable. With $200 full-featured netbooks flooding the market today, the Google offerings need to be extremely compelling.