Google’s world domination plan gets its final weapon: The Google OS

I find it hard to believe that anyone was surprised by the face that Google is developing its own operating system. Or that Google has Microsoft in its sights.

Ever since Google starting making its own web-based software the obvious next step was, well, obvious. When the Chrome browser came out last year the last piece of their world domination plan was in place, the tool that ties everything together.

It won’t be for a year, mid-2010, that the first netbooks come out running Chrome OS. After that, notebooks and PCs. Google officially announced the plan on its blog and listen to the very reasonable, compelling case they make for the necessity of such a new OS:

“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.

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.”

Microsoft is very close to releasing Windows 7, perhaps within a week or two. But then what? It takes Microsoft years to update Windows. It’s been fighting Google head on with its new and impressive Bing search engine. Now the battle is even more intense on the most important front yet.

I remember an interview I did with Microsoft funder Bill Gates a few years back. He said the critical thing consumers want in an operating system is speed, one that is almost instantly on. No more grinding hard drives and long screen draws. That, he said, would be the game winner and it was something he said his company was committed to doing.

Windows 7 doesn’t do that.

But guess what the Google Chrome OS will do? Here’s the answer from Google’s Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director:

“People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.”

You can bet the Microsoftians in Redmond are meeting about this today.

Google has started much more than a skirmish.