You don’t need a powerful computer and expensive software if all you do is check email, watch YouTube clips or hang out on Facebook. All you need are a good internet connection and a browser like Internet Explorer, FireFox or Google Chrome.

Your browser is your desktop

Thanks to broadband and ever-improving technology online has become a rich experience. Websites are becoming as sophisticated as programs that run on your own computer. So if you can do everything online then all your computer needs to do is… get you online.

Google Chrome OS is an operating system to make getting online as easy, quick and secure as possible. Programs will not run on the computer itself but online through a browser. Files will not be stored on the computer’s hard disk but online.

And as technology becomes more powerful there will be little difference between what you can do offline and online. Already now you can write documents, play games, edit photos and watch movies online.

Simple, secure, stable and… free

Google are designing Chrome OS so that users will not have to deal with viruses, malicious software and updates. This will be achieved by building a system that is far more simple than the current operating systems such as Microsoft Vista and Apple Mac OS X. Afterall, all it will need to do is to access the internet.

Google Chrome OS is going to be Linux based. Linux is an open source operating system that is quickly gaining popularity as it becomes easier to use – you may have heard of Ubuntu. Google Chrome, the browser from which you will do everything, will be ‘sitting’ on top of a re-engineered version of Linux.

Google will make Chrome OS available for free.

Watch the video, see the photos

Google has released a 6 minute video that explains in simple terms what Google Chome OS is.

A series of screenshots have also been released, but these may not be what the final product will look like.