Google drops bombs

So the word is out today: Google Chrome OS by mid-2010.

As a (recently) converted + devoted ubuntu zealot, my immediate reaction wasn't about microsoft, but of the other Linux players out there.

Will Chrome OS nudge them out of existence? Surely not (obviously). But in the desktop world where microsoft is king and mac is still a brand of objection (a lot of objectors, yes, but no matter what the crispin porter + bogusky MS campaign may make you want to believe, numbers don't lie and mac is an outsider OS).

But Ubuntu has been making fantastic inroads with normal desktop users. Historically, Linux has always been this scary thing you needed to read thick books and string code to use. Ubuntu has kind of changed that. I love it. It's really changed my relationship with anything having to do with my laptop and netbook. I'm a fan of Google and everything--but I worry that a brand as consumer-trusted, friendly and, well, GIGANTIC as Google could end up suffocating the other Linux platforms.

Hope I'm wrong. I suppose the fact that it's open source guards against that. I mean, it's not like google will start charging licensing fees, right? right?

Anyway, enough from me. I'm smart enough to know I don't know enough about this whole thing yet to have a proper prognostication or opinion.

The debate is going on out there. ZDnet editor-in-chief Larry Dignan wrote a good piece on it.