Techcrunch is reporting that the first releases of ChromeOS, the “mostly just a browser running on Linux OS” from Google is set to launch within a week. The major work continues to be driver support which spreads out among PC makers’ many components and manufacturers. The new OS will initially target netbooks with a particular aim to give Windows XP users something besides a crippled, expensive Windows 7 to upgrade. From there, however, Chrome should would on just about any Intel hardware including Macs. You’ll likely be able to test Chrome on Parallels or VMWare on Mac when it is released. In other Google Chrome news, Google has released specifications to a new application protocol called SPDY that they say is up to 64% faster than the HTTP protocol. New builds of Chromium are available to test this protocol, but there aren’t too many webservers out there using SPDY since Google hasn’t released that code yet. Google is certainly ambitious, if not downright scary, in the scope of its footprint on the web.
