Source: Google goes for speed, security in Chrome OS | Web Services | Macworld.

[…] As such, when the first Chrome OS netbooks hit the market at the end of 2010, Google expects them to be “companion” devices whose owners will also have conventional PCs in their houses. […]

I wonder what’s going to happen to netbooks before the end of 2010, though. Isn’t this too much planning ahead?

As such, it seems that the Linux-based Chrome OS will also require that end-users be very comfortable with cloud computing and its basic idea of keeping applications and their data stored in a vendor data center.

I for one am not very comfortable with that at all.

In exchange, Google is promising an operating system that it says will be exponentially faster at booting up and significantly more secure than conventional PC operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS.

And:

For security, Chrome OS places each application within what Google calls a “security sandbox,” stripping applications of the usual, broad access rights they have in conventional operating systems, and thus limiting their ability to do damage if compromised by malware. If Chrome OS detects a security problem, it has been designed to reboot itself to address the problem.

“Chrome OS runs completely inside the browser security model, which is very different from how traditional operating systems run today,” Pichai said.

And that might be cool and all, but Chrome OS also runs inside the ‘cloud’ security model, and to me that sound less reassuring, especially after what happened with the Danger/T‑Mobile/Sidekick situation last month.

These, of course, are just first impressions. Chrome OS looks very interesting UI-wise: I’d call it an activity-centered OS — there isn’t a real focus on the concepts of ‘applications’ and ‘documents’. The user experience at this early stage looks much more centered around activities and events.