Google looks a year ahead

Another big reason not to pre-release details is it tips off the competition, but in the world of open source and Web services that isn’t always a priority.

Google’s Chrome OS preview yesterday is a case in point. The company showed off an early version of its Chrome OS, but said it wouldn’t be available till a year from now in time for the 2010 holiday season.

Sundar Pichai and Matthew Papakipos, engineering director for Google Chrome OS, talk up the new operating system at Google’s headquarters. (Photo by David Needle)

“We’re opening up the project a year ahead of release. A lot of the UI will change and one thing I can guarantee is it won’t look like it does today, but important concepts will carry over,”, said Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management.

While much of the media focus was on the news that Chrome OS will initially be available on a new class of netbooks, the company really wanted to get the word out that the OS is an open source project — an effort nicely detailed by my colleague Sean Michael Kerner yesterday. That means getting outside developers involved early and often.

Google said it’s working with netbook manufacturers to deliver a better consumer experience than the current models offer. This will include bigger screens, full-sized keyboards and solid state drives that will boot the system in seven seconds or less.

(Side note: Hallelujah. I’ve been hearing promises of fast PC startup times from Intel and Microsoft for over a decade. SSD drives finally deliver on that promise. They haven’t become a staple of mainstream notebooks or desktops due to their higher cost and relatively limited capacity, but it looks like the netbook market is a good fit).

Analyst Greg Sterling said the new Chrome OS notebooks will have to come in under $500 by next Christmas and probably under $400 to achieve significant sales.

Given that’s about what netbooks are selling for today, that could be a pretty enticing package — a 12- to 14-inch screen, near-instant on netbook that’s always saving my work to the cloud and runs any number of Web applications and games.

Maybe I should hold off buying a netbook this year.