Google has announced that it is working on a Operating System to be called Chrome. This news has created a huge buzz in the industry. This operating system will be called as Chrome, which is also the name of its browser product. Chrome OS is tentatively planned to be launched in 2010.

This is the first time that Google is taking Microsoft head on in its territory, ie the Operating Systems. Microsoft Windows currently holds 85% of the market share and this will surely create a dent in this share.

With this move, Google has also attempted to capitalize on the fact that most users who upgraded to Vista, the latest version of Microsoft’s OS, are quite disappointed with its poor performance. With no option for them to seamlessly downgrade to XP and with the next version not planned at least until October of this year, it appears that Google has given the right response to Microsoft.

It is interesting to note that Google started with its key area of focus ie. Search. Microsoft launched Bing earlier this year and it has emerged as a strong competitor to Google Search. Microsoft started with its key area of focus ie. Operating Systems. Now with Google’s Chrome announcement, it appears that they are trying the reverse of what Microsoft is trying.

So each one is trying to step into the strong hold of the other. While some believe that this competition will result in better technology, others believe that Google might start interfering with the privacy of the desktop. Eg. Will the users be forced to see sponsored links when they search for their documents in their machines?

One advantage might be that Chrome might really not be a PC based OS, but a variation with an extremely thin client sitting on the PC leveraging the distributed applications available online already. This way there will be a single sign on into the PC as well as mail, chat, documents, applications, phone, etc.

The news is that it will initially target Netbooks, the smaller version of the laptops. The plan appears to take into consideration that Windows OS is extremely huge in size and slow down the Netbooks which are already low in processing power. In addition another issue is that XP is the recommended operating system that ships with most netbooks today, but IE6 is the browser that comes with XP and IE6 browser has lots of issues with reference to CSS.

It will be very interesting to see this space, especially with reference to the fact that Google had announced their vision of Google Wave earlier this year.

All roads appear to lead to better technology for the future. We will do our best to keep up with the pace.