Google's Chrome OS is so much steam

Google has recently announced its intention of releasing an new operating system (OS) in 2010. This OS will be called Chrome OS and will run on both x86 and ARM based systems. While this news is generally interesting, it essentially amounts to vaporware.

At the time of the announcement, and up to this day, Google didn't show so much as a single screenshot of the Chrome OS. While I do not dispute the existence of Chrome OS, the fact that nothing has been shown of it clearly states that Google is a long way from having a usable operating system.

While it is too soon to speculate about what effect a new OS from Google might have in the general market, I don't see it posing any sort of threat to OS X, as Apple customers might be hard pressed to exchange an OS that is tightly integrated with their hardware for a more basic experience. As Google's own stated target is primarily in the netbook space, I would say that both Windows and Linux tend to loose some market share when Chrome OS comes out. How much exactly will depend heavily on how good a user experience Google can deliver.

All that we can do now is wait and see what comes out of Google's labs, but with release date estimated for the second half of 2010, we might have to wait quite a bit to see anything of interest.