"But, after reading all the speculation in the last few days, I'm convinced that vaporware is a term that we need to revive and apply to the Google Chrome Operating System. Without some perspective, we can't even begin to consider how the announcement might affect the free software world.
"For anyone with a long memory, the initial announcement for Chrome OS was a classic piece of vaporware. The code won't be available until "later this year," and the final release will happen in the second half of 2010 and be targeted at netbooks.
"Yet that didn't stop Google executives Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson from describing Chrome OS as the hottest thing since the iPhone. It will be "lightweight," Pichai and Upson decreed, with a "minimal" interface, and built for "speed, simplicity, and security." But the real lack of concrete information was revealed by the continual repetition of the key point that Chrome will be an operating system based on web applications – without any specifics about exactly what that will mean."
