This seems to be the title everyone is using since Google announced the launch of its lightweight operating system, Google Chrome OS, but it could be argued that there isn’t much meat in this headline.

Granted Windows 7 is supposed to be a modular operating system that could potentially be deployed in lightweight systems such as web books (the target for Chrome OS) but I believe windows XP will stay the preferred choice for a low cost Windows solution in a web book.

If Chrome OS is not going to be competing with Windows 7, then what will it be competing with?

Competitors

Currently, if I do a search for web books on Amazon the first 10 machines use the following operating systems:-

• 4 on Linux based systems
• 6 on Windows XP

It’s obvious which 2 platforms dominate the web book market at present but the announcements in June that Acer planned to start shipping web books with the Google Android operating system and other manufacturers are considering shipping android with budget models, imply that competition could well be between the two Google platforms for market share rather than against a Windows platform of any kind.

Google Chrome OS -vs- Google Android

Now I do appreciate the two different ideas for both operating systems; Android is being developed to be better integrated into the various social media platforms that are popping up daily, whilst Chrome OS is designed to give more efficient performance on the web and make integration with the cloud more efficient.

I guess that means that if I want to use Google docs over Word or Excel, I should buy a web book with Google Chrome OS. However if I wish to use my web book to monitor my various social media sites I should opt for Google Android. But what do I buy if I want to do a range of things on my web book?!

My Thoughts

The bottom line is that these are two Google operating systems that are most likely to be distributed within the budget web books niche and a company releasing two products with similar concepts at the same time, designed for the same market can’t be a smart move.

Personally, I believe Google’s resource used to develop these two platforms would have been better spent perfecting a platform for people who want a lightweight computer that not only performs efficiently on the web, but in other areas too.