Eric Schmidt says that Chrome OS is a thin client. Really?

Google just ended its launch event for Chrome OS and the Chrome Web Store. The Chrome Web Store will offer HTML5/AJAX applications, and it's pretty straightforward. Far more perplexing was Google's launch of its Chrome OS. The principle of Chrome OS is that it's the Chrome browser with only the necessary additional system-level hooks to control the underlying hardware of a netbook or similar device. The entire user interface is inside the browser window--there's no separate "desktop".

Google repeatedly said that Chrome OS is perfect for netbooks, and the company has been running it on its own prototype netbooks in-house. Acer and Samsung have committed to ship netbooks with Chrome OS some time in mid-2011. However, netbook sales have slowed as the iPad has gained popularity, and a flood of new tablets next year will drive netbook sales even lower.

So, will Chrome OS work on tablets? The Chrome OS team was asked about it in the Q&A session and sidestepped the question. Google didn't show any tablets running Chrome OS, and it didn't demonstrate any multitouch features. Android appears to be Google's tablet solution. If the market is moving away from netbooks and toward tablets, and Android is Google's tablet platform, why is Google putting resources into Chrome OS?

The answer was surprising. Google's Eric Schmidt said that Chrome OS is, in fact, the first commercially-acceptable implementation of the thin client architecture that Sun tried to sell years ago. Really? The reason for thin clients was that personal computers cost a lot of money and were difficult to maintain in a corporate IT architecture. Today, PCs are dirt cheap (cheaper than thin clients were "back in the day"), and it's far easier for IT departments to maintain their networks of computers.

So, does this mean that Chrome OS is being built for a platform (netbooks) that's rapidly becoming obsolete, and for an application (thin clients) that's already obsolete? Is anyone from the Android team talking with the Chrome OS team? Are they even in the same company? In short, is there anyone in charge at Google?

Is Google's Chrome Web Store a precursor to Chrome tablets?

The rumors are flying that Google plans to release a Chrome OS-based tablet built by HTC in partnership with Verizon, and put it on sale on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving and the heaviest shopping day in the U.S.) Google is also preparing the Chrome Web Store--no rumor, since it was announced at the I/O Conference earlier this year. Details on the Store are now up on Google's web site; here are a few highlights:

• Developers will be able to create and offer installable web apps based on HTML5 and Ajax, themes that change the look of the Chrome browser/OS, and Chrome browser extensions that change or add to the functionality of Chrome itself.
• Apps can be given away or sold. The minimum price for sold apps is $1.99 (vs $0.99 in the iPhone app store), and Google will charge a processing fee of 5% of the sale price plus $0.30 per transaction (vs. Apple's 30% of the sale price.) For a $1.99 sale price, the developer would retain $1.59 from Google and $1.39 from Apple.
• The Chrome Web Store also supports one-time payments as well as monthly or yearly subscriptions, free trial options, and what they call "custom payment solutions".

Google is clearly working to have a good population of apps, themes and extensions ready for this Fall, which is when the first Chrome OS tablet is rumored to be hitting the market. This may also explain in part why Google has refused to allow any tablet vendors to license Google's Android applications or access the Android Marketplace. If Google is positioning Android for phones and Chrome OS for tablets, it would be in its interest to discourage usage of Android for tablets. On the other hand, we hear of new Android tablets under development almost every day, and that Gingerbread, the next major release of Android, will have explicit support of tablets. So who knows, and more to the point, what are consumers to think if tablets running on two completely different Google operating systems come out at about the same time?