It all probably happened when a bunch of people started installing Android on their under powered netbooks to get some work done. This was something the chums at Google never really saw but obviously couldn’t sit idle over. “What if we make an OS in true Google fashion and give the guys at Redmond some sleepless nights?”. “Perfect” said the boss and here’s what you need to know about it.

1. It’s free.  The best word in the dictionary. The guys at Google are going to make it open source, which means it can be customised and the code is free to be tinkered with.

2. It’s going to be fast and lightweight.  The OS will apparently start up in just a few seconds, unlike Windows, which allows you to make coffee while it starts.

3. It is reportedly, more secure. Simply because virus writers dont know what its like yet. Lets see how long we go before we need anti-virii.

4. It is mainly aimed at netbooks but smaller systems mainly used for emails and web work.

5. All your Google apps will run on it, and also on all other standards-based browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux. Thus they aim to take over the digital world, in short.

6. They are working with some biggies to “design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience”. Some of those include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba. In short everyone who matters.

But wait! Everything cannot be all nice and sundry. Here’s a low-down on why you shouldn’t Google your hearts out on this and get too excited:

1. There’s one more year to go. A lot of stuff can happen in a year.

2. I’m sure the Google guys know their stuff, but an OS is a lot more work than browsers and apps.

3. Is there really a need for another netbook focused OS? We will only know when we actually see the OS. Like a wise guy once  said, “you never know what you need until you have it and can’t live without it.”

4. Can people be convinced to switch to Chrome OS? The last one is the question which is on everyone’s minds. We switched over to Google search (from Yahoo and AskJeeves). We changed to GMail from all other accounts. We said goodbye to Yahoo Messenger and MSN messenger just requires a formal burial. Will Windows be the next one dead?