We are not yet out of Microsoft’s PDC’09 hangover and there are some exciting news coming by from GooglePlex, Silicon Valley. Google organized a tech press meet to reveal the first impressions of Google Chrome OS that’s scheduled to arrive later next year. However, looking at the swiftness in the development, it’s more likely that Google is all set to surprise us.

Sticking to its early remarks on Chrome OS, Google declared that the three major things that they want to incorporate are speed, simplicity and security. Taking the side of cloud computing, Google Chrome OS is expected to be just a browser that’s easy to use with zero maintenance as it’s all about Web applications.

The following screenshots are courtesy Sam Diaz of ZDNet (modified to get along with the description) who was at the Googleplex when the demonstrations were going on. From the screenshots, Chrome OS looks just like Chrome browser but hey, this is just a first glimpse of the foetus. It’s definitely more likely that the UI does a make over.

It shows tabs of the ‘browser’ where you can find the apps. The most stressed feature being speed, the extremely lightweight ‘panels’ will replace what we commonly refer to as ‘windows’. And so, there is ‘panel’ for everything – notepad, music player, etc. Next up, is the Chrome button, that serves the task of ‘start menu’ where all the apps dwell.

Apparently, one can customize it according to their own preferences like opening multiple windows, stack up favorite tabs, etc.

The Engineering Director Matt Papakipos seems very keen on the speed factor when he revealed that all devices were based on solid state storage and the out-of-RAM boot being the reason for a hyper quick boot. You can check out the extended article here.

What is Google Chrome OS?