Chrome was a starting point, and while getting 30 million users in 9 months is a good start, it is still just a tiny fraction of the web population, so Google's got a long way to go before it can claim the browser Chrome a success. Chrome OS on the other hand is a different animal, it'll be the only thing users need to get up and running on a new computer while having simple native tasks be quick and web tasks even quicker. As new web technologies evolve along with the growing presence of "offline" web apps, there was still always a need to have some distinction between the browser and the operation system. That line is blurring and perhaps Google's figured this out and may just have found a way to combine the two under Chrome's umbrella. Brilliant, if it were available today, but unfortunately for Google and its users the creation of a platform needs the help of several building partners, since no one buys an operating system off the shelf these days. Except of course for loyal Mac purists, which love having their Mac OS X be the latest and greatest, and given Apple's pricing commitment to the next version of OS X its a hard upgrade to pass up. Kudos to Apple for figuring out people can still want to buy software off the shelf.

Twenty-nine dollars for a new version of an operating system, that's an incredible price from the folks at Cupertino, and something Microsoft's bean-counters certainly cannot match with Windows 7. However, someone can, and that someone is Google! Chrome OS, like the Chrome browser, is of course based on open-source software, and in and of itself will be open-source, just like Google's Android OS is for mobile phones. What that means is that Chrome OS will cost NOTHING to computer manufacturers who will shoe-horn it into the netbooks/laptops/desktops of the future. Tough to compete with free! Especially if its quality free from a source as reputable as Google.

But herein lies the rub, what's in it for Google? All these free services and platforms can't just be a secret desire to topple the greatest technology behemoth of all time, can it? Of course not, Google's clearest path to monetization is to get users onto the web as quickly, efficiently and distraction-free as possible, because it wants to be the one doing the distracting with advertisements of all shapes and sizes, from text ads in search, to display ads on the network, to video ads on YouTube and everything else under the sun. How do you provide web users the easiest route to the web? Well build your own free multi-lane uber-autobahns with Android and now Chrome OS. The two pillars of the web of the future and Google will have troops at each one, mobile and home computing.

The more time users spend on the web, and the more tasks they begin shifting to the web, the better for Google and the more opportunities Google gets to serve up ads from its vast and numerically superior stable of advertisers. This is why Google is free, in its eyes Life should be subsized by advertising, and advertising of the future will all become Internet based and completely trackable because is gives the advertiser complete metrics and Return-On-Investment calucations to the tiniest detail that are unmatched in any other ad-based marketplace. And as Televisions and Radios become Internet enabled in the future, bet Google will be right there with the expertise to build out a similar type of ad network.