On December 7th, Google is expected to announce the release of a laptop with the first version of the Chrome operating system. Concurrently, Google is going great guns with Android. Does Google really need two operating systems? So what’s going on here?
Here’s what Google is up to. Yes, both Android and Chrome OS are Linux-based operating systems. Neither, at the application level, uses the common Linux desktop application programming interfaces (API) that are used by the GNOME or KDE desktops and their applications.
They’re also similar in that both use a common set of techniques to make them more secure. The most important of these is process sand-boxing. What this means is that any Chrome or Android application has just enough access to the system to do its job.
Once you’re past this, the two look and act in very different ways. Here are their main points of difference: