Google introduced Chrome OS yesterday and it should be available to the public in the second half of 2010. Does anyone else feel somewhat violated by this or is it just me? It’s bad enough Google wants to control my personal and domain email with Gmail, schedule my days and weeks with Calendar, update me on my financial life with Finance, know where I want to go with Maps and Google Earth, and store my medical information with Medical Records but now they want to do this the instant I boot my computer? Will I need to provide a DNA sample in order to login to Chrome OS?

From the official Google blog post: “So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System.” How is that a natural extension? That’s like an automobile tire manufacturer suddenly saying they’ve developed a new kind of car because it’s a “natural extension”.

If a “natural extension” involves the creation of a new flavor of Linux with a Google logo plastered all over it then I must have missed something. Google continues to write “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.” Google does know that this already exists in the form of Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, SuSE, Mandriva, Knoppix, Fedora Core, etc. right? Google seems to take credit for a lot of previous work considering all they’ve doing is create “a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel”. I’m willing to bet that this “new windowing system” isn’t really new either. Let’s be honest Google, you wrote some code to allow Google Chrome to work within a windowing system on top of the Linux kernel and now you want the general public to eat it up as the greatest computing invention in history. I will say that it’s about time you allowed Google Chrome to run on Linux since Google Chrome doesn’t support Linux natively in its current state.

In addition to this “natural extension” and these key features provided only by Chrome OS Google writes “and as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.” Again, it’s called Linux. Google should not take credit for something just because they want to take a shot at Microsoft. Apple is trying to do the same thing to Microsoft (think PC vs. Mac commercials) and with more market share comes more vulnerabilities and more security patches. But just like Apple, Google too, will run into their fair share of security issues.

Google concluded their announcement stating “We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision.” Sorry Google. You won’t be receiving any help from me. You are now the new Microsoft and I wish you the best of luck in your future antitrust lawsuits.