Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS is an open source lightweight operating system (OS). It uses one-sixth as the location of the hard drive in the form of Windows 7 and is intended for a netbook or tablet PC that uses data stored from web-based applications and remote servers.

Chrome OS is lightweight so that the boot time is approximately seven seconds. Google released source code under the BSD license in July 2009 under a major project called Chrome for Chrome OS. The operating system is built on a Linux kernel and runs on Intel x86 and ARM chips.

Google Chrome OS's only software application is Google's browser, also known as Chrome. Both Chrome OS and Browser share an auto-update feature that allows Google to push updates using Secure Socket Layer (SSL). The end user is not able to reject the security update or to switch back to the previous version.

Chrome OS is not available for download. Instead, Google is partnering with original device manufacturers (OEMs), which include Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Intel, which build hardware capable of using OS. Although Chrome OS will support hard disk drives, but Google is encouraging its partners to use solid-state drives, which do not have moving parts.