Today’s heavily hyped press event around Google’s operating system (which is still a year away from launch) would make one think that major new features were about to be announced. However, this is no Google Navigation announcement. MSFT closed down –1.10% for the day and GOOG also closed down –0.63% for the day.

First, the simple question, what is Google’s Chrome O/S? Chrome is a fast, lightweight web browser that does not allow any modification to the base system. Chrome O/S is a dumb terminal. There are no plans for storage built into the system, relying completely on the cloud to store data.

How are they handling the major points I raised in my last post?

1. Device Compatibility – Google only announced compatibility with storage cards, digital cameras, and printers. Driver support for printers has historically been a problem for Microsoft (note over 2M results for searches around XP, Vista, and Win7). There are many vendors and legacy printers that users will expect support for. So, Google is focusing on only a few segments to support, but even then, it’s still a big problem to solve in the next year.
2. Application Compatibility – As predicted, Google will support extensions and plugins, but not have “native apps”. Still to see if Chrome will support running web applications stored on an SD card…
3. Web Compatibility – If I were at the press event, this would be where my questions would focus. Google glossed over what will be supported and did not show any OpenID, Facebook, or other online authentication modules. Presence is obviously built in, utilizing the current Google Talk interfaces. Nothing really new here.

All in all, I thought it was a great overview, although not very groundbreaking. Looks like Google will be offering this for free, mainly around netbooks, for launch sometime in Q4 2010. Windows 7 Starter is currently priced around $30, so it remains to be seen what sort of impact these Google Chrome “appliances” will have on this market. Historically, MSFT has dominated Linux in the netbook space, achieving massive market share even while charging for the product. Chrome is getting a lot of hype, but will it topple MSFT? Time will tell…