If I write it down today and say “I always told you so” , you would not believe me. But couple of years back while discussing with my friends and colleagues I was telling them that google has the best chance to give challenge to Microsoft in Operating Systems. It is not that google has best brains(I do not doubt that) but because it is following a very planned strategy. The reason for this was as follows :

When you own a computer , except all the computer game junkies and programmers most of us open up a browser ,surf internet, use MS office suites , email , listen songs or download pictures.

Since google had integrated its own application suite in the web, there was very little use of an Operating system. So why can’t a browser like Firefox(Chrome was not out then)not be installed  on Linux and sold to customers.

So on browser you surf internet , upload and share pictures. For work you can use google office suite which works very well within browser . So you do not need a full fledge OS.  A lightweight linux can be used and you save your $100 which you pay for OS.

And this I was saying before Chrome(Google’s browser ) was released.

Today google has announced they are launching Google Chrome Operating System in second half of 2010.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.

Read it here in google blog

Currently they are targeting net book , but no reason why it cannot be upgraded for laptops in coming years.

There is a lot of business learning from this piece of news and with what Microsoft has been doing for years. We will cover that in next post.