The day before yesterday Google announced that it was going to release a much-anticipated “Chrome Operating System.”  Shortly thereafter, parts of the geek community erupted in rapture, singing the praises of Google; some claimed that this might be a serious challenge to Microsoft, and will reinvent the PC as we know it.  Thankfully, some more level heads have chimed in to clear the air a little bit, but it stunned me just a little bit to see such a response from Googlers.  Macheads?  Absolutely!  But I didn’t think Google had quite reached “golden poop” status yet.

We don’t know a whole lot of real facts about the OS yet.  According to Google, it’ll be a “new windowing system” running on top of the linux kernel.  Of course, the Chrome browser will figure prominently into it, which is where all of the hugging comes from.  Folks seem to paint it as the new internet appliance; everything runs in the browser, and the OS is simply the presentation layer.  Google Apps is on the center stage; who needs Word and Excel when you have Google Docs?  (My opinion: a lot of people.)

Obviously, this whole thing is quite debatable.  There are a lot of people who are a lot more plugged in than I am, so I won’t add any more than I have to the noise.  I will only restate the seemingly obvious:  the Chrome OS will still run on a PC under the linux kernel, so it will still have the inherent pluses and minuses of that platform.  If enough people use the OS, it will still become subject to viral onslaught—linux-based systems aren’t perfect; they’re just a bit more secure and less of a popular target.  Google’s Chrome OS will not change those facts.  Unless I’m missing something, any statements to the contrary are just hype.