It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

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It seems that the endless rumors about Google making an Operating System were not unfounded after all. After this announcement I went through the list of Google products, and I have found that basically Google’s model is simple. They take an existing product or function and create an improved version of it, in accordance with the company’s view. By making such a product the force the hand of the previous competitors, thus accelerating the evolution of said product and benefiting everyone.

Take Gmail for example, before Gmail came around all web based free email platforms had ridiculous restrictions 2-10 mb per account, no large attachments, poor POP and IMAP support etc… Then along comes Gmail and it blows all the caps and restrictions providing free unlimited space with POP and IMAP support excellent search and a snazzy interface. Immediately the competition reacts and now most of the web based email platforms support a wide range of features and unlimited space.

Google has done this with many of their products , Google Earth, Google News, Google Voice, the threat to buy the 700 mghz spectrum and many more. Google is playing a game and the thing is, that they are good at it. With this announcement about an OS they just threw the ball in Microsoft’s court. I guarantee you that the next version of “Windows” will take a lot from this.

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My fiance was one of the lucky first to be changed over and I am using her account to write this, it seems to me that either they haven’t turned the service fully on or they are missing the boat completely. I used my personal account to make an updated and I expected it to show automatically on her home page since its supposed to be a live stream. I waited several minutes and saw no change, I had to refresh the page for it to pull up the new status changes and updates. So far I am not very impressed although I must say that the change is small enough to get by without much trouble unlike the beacon feauture and the terms of service.

Here is a screens-shot of her profile after the change.

How do you like the new change? Did it work as advertised?