Google puts Chrome OS into open source

Google put its Chrome OS into open source yesterday and expects it to be available in devices a year from now. The operating system comes from a very different standpoint to Android, initially targeting netbooks but potentially overlapping with its stablemate in smartphones and smartbooks. It looks forward to the world Google envisages, where most functions and data are moved off the device and onto the network and the servers of the cloud, with applications running in the open browser.

Sundar Pichai, Google's VP of product management, said: "Google developers will be working off the same tree as external developers." The OS is still in an early stage of development, but is not a full blown operating system in the conventional sense. Instead it provides a layer of low level software beneath the Chrome browser, with most of the work and development being done there. This could drive the evolving mobile internet device category into even more browser-oriented formats than the current designs being pushed by the cellphone community, notably Qualcomm and Freescale with their smartbooks. Read more...