As the world knows by now, Google had a PR event to show off its new browser operating system Chrome. As it turns out there is not much to jump around about. What you get with Chrome OS is just the Chrome web browser because everything runs on the web. There really is no way to install Firefox or anything else. So why would Google release a OS that is just a web browser? Good question.

What I think is that by having there own OS, Google can get a lot of info on how people use there systems. The better reason is that every app that Google has runs on the web. There are desktop versions of some of them like Earth and Picasa but it is pretty much web based. If you also remember from a few years ago Google paid for a ton of the dark fiber around the country. My guess would be that they might have there own open or low priced WiFi.

Over all I fell that not many people are going to be using Chrome OS for the simple reason that we like having our files, be it music, apps, or pictures on our systems. We like having it with us and doing what we want with it without needing to be on the web. I know I do. But I just can’t get my head around why Google would make a OS that does less then what I can do right now. Over the next year maybe I will understand but right now I just don’t get it because there is nothing that Chrome OS does that I can’t do right now.

If you would like to try out Google Chrome OS you can get a VMDK image over at GDGT.com. You are going to need VMWare or VirtualBox. But if you just want some pictures of it running I uploaded just about everything you can see to Flickr and Emberapp.com.

If you have a better idea why Google Chrome OS is so light weight please post a comment. I would love to hear what other people think.