Acer to launch first Google Chrome OS netbook in 2010

Acer is fixing to be the first manufacturer to offer a Google Chrome OS netbook, according to chairman JT Wang.

The word is that Wang wants to offer an Acer netbook with the open-source web-based operating system some time in the second half of next year and reveals that the company has been working with Chrome since the middle of this year.

Google is aiming to get Chrome OS ready for prime time for November 2010, so it’s unclear how Acer will intends to get head start — we can safely assume that every manufacturer from ASUS to Toshiba is at least tinkering with Chrome OS on their netbooks at the moment.

Acer was the first (and possibly the only) manufacturer to launch a netbook that could dual-boot the Google Android operating system — the Aspire AOD250. That smartphone OS is ill-suited to a netbook though and Acer’s effort wasn’t well-received.

Incidentally, if you’re a bit confused by the metallic names of Google’s various projects at the moment, here’s a quick refresher.

• Chrome is Google’s web browser, currently available for Windows and (any day now) Mac OS. The name comes from the term used to describe the user interface of any web browser — ‘chrome’ (the shiny stuff, in other words).
• Chromium is the source code of for the Chrome web browser application that Google released as an open-source project last year. Anyone can compile this into their web browser program for any operating system (with a bit of effort), but it’s still called Chromium — not Chrome.
• Chrome OS is the netbook operating system that Google is developing that’s based largely around its Chrome web browser — Chrome / Chrome OS, see?
• Chromium OS is the open-source version of Chrome OS — just like the Chrome web browser, Google released the source code for its fledgling operating system for anyone to use. This is what everyone is using at the moment — Google hasn’t released Chrome OS to the public, and won’t until late next year.

[ DigiTimes]