Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management at Google, and Linus Upson, a Google Engineering Director, posted details about the long-awaited Google Chrome OS yesterday on the Official Google Blog. Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android.

"Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems," wrote Pichai and Upson.

"While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google," they added.

Already, over 30 million people use the Google Chrome browser regularly, they noted.

The Google Chrome Operating System, they explained, is a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome.

"It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be," they declared. (The operating systems that browsers run on till now were designed in an era where there was no web, they noted.)

Here is their summary of how the project will develop:

"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. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips, added Pichai and Upson. And Google is working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year, they noted.

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