Chromium OS is an open-source project that aims to build an operating system that provides a fast, simple, and more secure computing experience for people who spend most of their time on the web. Here you can review the project’s design docs, obtain the source code, and contribute. To learn more about the project goals, read the announcement blog post.

To start using it you need to get yourself a Chromebook. Chromebooks boot in 8 seconds and resume instantly. Your favorite websites load quickly and run smoothly, with full support for the latest web standards and Adobe® Flash®. In fact, Chromebooks are designed to get faster over time as updates are released.

For even more info catch up on Wikipedia. And, if you buy one please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Could this be true?

Does it sound insane? Well, maybe a little. But then again Google breathes mainly on adverts and Valve’s netdistro application Steam would be a fantastic way of delivering just that. Not to mention ads in games!

The Inquirer claim to have the news from reliable sources, but have no evidence besides this.

Valve denies – Google wont comment

Valve claims this is not true. However, when there’s a leakage this is normally the standard response from the companies involved. What does Google say? “We do not make comments on rumours and speculations”. So in other words, they’re not denying it, which somewhat strengthens the theory.

Google owns game ad technology

There’s been speculations earlier about Google entering the game market. As previously mentioned there could be a lot of money in game ads. Forbes article last Tuesday speculated about this exact topic.

Also, Google’s recent acquisition, Adscape Media, completes the picture. Adscape is a company that creates applications that enables the possibility for ads in games.

So will all games be free?

If the advertisers paid for the game development, will we get the games for free? Probably not! And would you play a game if you were constantly annoyed by ads?? Feel free to share your thoughts on this one in the comments.

Sources: The Inquirer, Gizmodo, Shacknews and Mcvuk

ReadWriteWeb claims Chrome already got 1,5% of the market share, running up behind IE, FF and Opera but in front of all the rest. I assume the numbers are a bit high as most of the registered traffic probably comes from users just testing it out. Then again, if they like what they see they just might stick with it.

I for one am quite happy with FF and all its add-ons, but would really like to hear from the rest of you should you have good (or bad) experience with the newcomer.

Also, do we really need yet another browser? From a designers point of view this seams like more work as we now have to make even more browser specific rules to get the pages right Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad if Microsoft, Yahoo and Google joined forces even though that would mean monopoly yet again…

Update: There seams to be at least one good reason NOT to start using Chrome…

Even though it has received massive criticism the photo is still available.

In Thailand you can clearly identify persons “associating” with ladies of easy virtue (probably other places as well). Furthermore, photos of persons caught during personal crisis or under unfortunate circumstances seems to fire up under the debate whether this new map service is indeed an invasion of privacy.

Google on the other side claims that there isn’t such a thing as absolute privacy any more IF you are photographed and published while in public areas.

As far as I can understand this service is supposed to be a map service. Therefore I can’t understand why people and “events” should be displayed as they/it have/has nothing to do with the service itself. Concequently Google needs to “filter” this service before publishing in my opinion and only display what is really relevant.

Seeing your house on fire, or anyone doing something they’re not supposed to be doing for that matter doesn’t serve anyone any good. I understand the photo team has limited time in order to keep everything up to date, but then again they could replace some images with others (previously taken) if something out of the ordinary is taking place at the time of “capturing”.

What’s your take on this? And have you come across anything special on Google Street View’s lately?