Google will unveil a Chrome OS netbook Dec. 7. Key questions include: when can the public get them, and will the iPad and Android machines allow them to prosper?
Google is hosting an event
Dec. 7 where it will likely demonstrate a netbook based on its long-awaited
Chrome operating system.
Chrome OS is Google's
support platform for its increasingly popular Chrome Web browser, which
accounts for 9.27 percent of browser use, according to Net Applications.
Google intends the platform to run on netbooks and other machines with
keyboards,
booting up in seconds as an alternative to computers based on
Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS and Linux.
Google late Dec. 3 e-mailed
eWEEK a media invitation to a Chrome-related event, stating simply: "On Dec. 7, we will host
an event in San Francisco where we plan to share some exciting news about
Chrome."
Engadget and other tech blogs said that this event will feature Chrome OS on a
Google-branded netbook, and
possibly the formal
launch of the Chrome Web Store, which will provide an outlet for programmers to showcase and sell Web
applications for the platform.
Engadget
said the Intel Atom chip-powered machine "isn't going to be a mass market
device" and that there will only be around 65,000 units available to Googlers
and their friends and family.
Chrome OS is still very much in a beta stage
unfit for mass consumption. The blog also offers pictures of a Chrome OS
netbook keyboard
here.
Google
released Chrome OS to open source in November 2009 with the stated goal of
getting Chrome OS machines from partners such as Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba to
consumers in time for the holiday shopping season.
Black Friday, the prime time
for selling such consumer electronics devices, has come and gone with no Chrome
OS machines launched.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt
said at the Web 2.0 Summit Nov. 15 that Chrome OS was a few months from public
launch on netbooks.
Google has clearly been
testing Chrome OS netbooks in house, which is what company engineers will
show off at an event in San Francisco Tuesday. Expect a mass consumer launch
of Chrome OS netbooks in 2011.
Tthe market's reception of the device should be
interesting to watch. Apple's iPad and Android-based
tablet computers such as Samsung's Galaxy Tab have
chomped PC and netbook share in the
latter half of 2010.
Questions on peoples' minds include: when can the public get them,
and will Chrome OS machines be relegated to niche product status thanks
to tablets?
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