We’ve loved Google Chrome for its speed, sure its missing a whole bucket load of features compared to Internet Explorer 8 and has no extensions like Mozilla’s Firefox but its architecture and speed make it a lot appealing to me compared to the rest.

When Google announced Chrome, there was a fair amount of speculation that it was the start of the project which could be aiming towards a browser operating system, a instant on way of accessing the web and making use of the many excellent web applications available now.

Well yesterday Google confirmed what we believed to be so and announced Google Chrome OS.

“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.”

I think this is a real game changer, with the project being open source, netbook manufacturers once again have the opportunity to provide lower cost netbooks without the hassle of having to make users learn a new operating system like Linux and with the backing of a company like Google. Not only that but Googles pledge to make it ARM compatible is fairly major in itself, with ultra high efficient ARM chips running at 1Ghz like the Qualcomm Snapdragon, you open up all sorts of all day battery devices.

Its some very interesting news and I personally look forward to seeing the fruits of this challenge.