Gmail creator: Chrome OS is as good as dead

Former Google employee, Gmail creator, and FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit has come right out and said what many people are thinking (or hoping for). On his FriendFeed page, Buchheit made a post titled "Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or "merged" with Android)." In it, he bluntly says that Google's netbook-centric Chrome OS is as good as dead.

"Yeah, I was thinking, 'is this too obvious to even state?', but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason," Buchheit writes. "Because ChromeOS has no purpose that isn't better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display)."

Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to differentiate Android and Chrome OS. He tried to explain why Google was working on a second operating system by saying that Android is tailored for mobile devices with touchscreens while Chrome OS is primarily designed around something with a keyboard (traditional computers such as PCs, netbooks, and laptops).

That may be true, but Android is already appearing on various non-touch devices. Separately, Android 3.0 (codenamed Honeycomb), which comes out next year, is supposed to feature tablet-specific improvements so the different types of devices we'll see it on will continue to grow.

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