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Google: Chrome OS will launch late autumn

By Reuters and Barry Collins

Posted on 2 Jun 2010 at 08:47

Google expects to release its Chrome operating system in the "late autumn" of 2010, as it looks to compete with rival Microsoft's Windows.

Speaking at the Computex trade show, Sundar Pichai, Google's vice-president for product management, did not give a specific month, referring only to the autumn.

He reiterated that Chrome will be designed initially to work on laptop PCs.

Acer was reported to be launching a netbook based on Google Chrome at this week's show, but the company scotched the rumours a couple of weeks ago, although stated that it believes Chrome to be "an exciting product announcement" that "deserves full attention".

Yesterday, reports claimed that Google had decided to ban Windows PCs internally, following the security attacks on the company that took place last year. Google is instead urging employees to run Mac or Linux machines, as well as the company's own Chrome OS.

Chrome OS is little more than a web browser that's designed to take advantage of cloud computing services such as Google's own Gmail and Docs.

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User comments

Knock me down with a feather...

Surprise, surprise. Only a day after they made a big ding dong about Windows security and how they're kicking it out, that they then announce the release of their very own OS.

By Steve_Adey on 2 Jun 2010

yeah but they're using OSX so what does that say about their own OS?

By TimoGunt on 2 Jun 2010

That it's no good for doing any real work, only browsing ;)

By Steve_Adey on 2 Jun 2010

Chrome OS always was for consuming content rather than making it. It's for netbooks and tablets.

By Paul_Mc on 2 Jun 2010

See the bigger picture

If/more likley, when this becomes established - certainly on netbook market and possible other users, including many PC users who want a simple quick OS for net access - I can see people tinkering with it to install/access software already on the computer. This will lead to some software developers to produce software installable under the OS. I see this as a longer term project to make this a fully fledged OS without the horrors of pretending to be one from the off. This can only be a good thing to wean people away from the burdensome WIndows OS. It is an unnecessarily huge beast.

By Manuel on 2 Jun 2010

If Microsoft itself could wean people off the old Windows iterations that it wouldn't be such a huge beast.

It's the need for backward compatibility for multiple applications and peripherals that bloats Win7 way above what it would be if it were being launched as a stand alone OS.

Can you imagine the uproar if Win7 had been released with no backward compatibility for any prior Win OSes?

By Phoomeister on 2 Jun 2010

The bigger picture is Cloudy

With a strong migration off Desktop to cloud/browser now taking place who would want to be strapped to an unreliable local disc bound OS. Today it is so easy to compute and collaborate with powerful spreadsheets, shared documents, online accounting systems and a hundred other industry grade applications.

By chrisclarkgold on 3 Jun 2010

"Can you imagine the uproar if Win7 had been released with no backward compatibility for any prior Win OSes?

Used to be a rumour that a break with the past was due with the next version of Windows. I think they'll have to do it soon - though I'll be sorry to lose the DOS box which runs some very old games for me!

By Philippa on 7 Jun 2010

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