Google is holding an event this morning in San Francisco to make some special announcements about the long-awaited Chrome OS.
We’ll be live-blogging the event here and will update this post every couple minutes with new facts about Chrome OS, insights from Google executives and our own experiences hands-on with the OS.
What we have at the outset is a rather limited set of information. Chrome OS has been in the works for quite some time; the company first announced it in June 2009.
One of the more recent insights we’ve been given is that Google’s operating system differs from Android in that it’s intended for traditional, PC-type devices, including netbooks. Android will continue to be Google’s OS for mobile phones and tablets.
Stay tuned for more.
All times are in Pacific Standard Time.
10:30 a.m. Sundar Pichai is Google’s VP, Product Management. A year ago, Google announced the open-source Chrome project. The company was focused on speed, simplicity and security.
Now, Chrome has 120 million daily users.
10:35 a.m. Brian Rakowski, the director of Product Management, is now showing off different facets of the Chrome browser, especially speed in loading PDFs and other types of problematic content.
10:45 a.m. Pichai is back onstage. Google is announcing Crankshaft, which will speed up the Chrome browser even more. Google is also allowing for browser syncing, including themes and bookmarks.
As far as security goes, Google is going to start sandboxing plugins, as well.
10:55 a.m. Pichai is now talking about the Chrome Web Store, which he says is intended to connect developers — especially small, independent devs — and end users. We’re going to see a Web Store demo now.
The Web Store was announced in May 2010 at Google I/O. Now, Pinchai is showing us NPR and Sports Illustrated apps in the store — and games, too. App buying is simple; purchasing is done through the user’s Google Checkout account.
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