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Google's hesitancy about Android appearing on netbooks becomes clearer now - the firm is developing a separate, though related, operating system for this platform, which could be extended to take on Microsoft head-on in the PC market. Based on the Chrome browser, the OS, optimized for web services, will be targeted initially at netbooks, said the search giant.

This move is partly to strengthen Google's play for Microsoft's enterprise market dominance, which it has previously attacked from the sidelines with applications like Gmail. But it is also a bolder quest to put Google in a Microsoft-style position across all client platforms, dominating the cloud computing era - and, as PCs and phones converge, the netbook holds a key strategic position as the first example of a new wave of highly mobile, web-oriented devices.

What is not clear is how many features 'Chrome OS' and Android will share, given their potential collision in the netbook/smartbook middle ground - the new OS will run on Intel x86 or ARM-based chips. Sundar Pichai, VP of product management at Google, said they were quite separate platforms, and then stated the obvious - Chrome OS will be power-light, fast and will start up in a few seconds, addressing the main criticisms of Windows, and will be geared to a world where web services underpin most user activity. It will be Linux-based but most apps will run on the web itself, lending itself to cloud computing services and to making Web 2.0 - active apps rather than just static pages - become real.

"Most of the user experience takes place on the web," he said on his blog. "And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

Google says it is working with netbook partners now and devices should appear on the market in the second half of 2010. Its belief that the client OS must be web-optimized, to take full advantage of the cloud and internet services, contrasts with recent comments from Microsoft about its own Azure cloud computing architecture. Speaking at the Wireless 2.0 conference in the UK last week, Gurprit Singh, director of emerging technology at Microsoft, seemed studiedly neutral on the end user OS. "Azure is a web services platform with the services exposed, so you don't need a particular OS at the client side," he said, though he couldn't resist adding: "For developers, all-Windows makes sense."

These snapshot comments illustrate how Microsoft is on the defensive in the cloud, especially as access to that goes increasingly mobile, trying to support third party technologies; while Google is on the offensive, seeing a chance to make its own platforms, even if these have an open source foundation, ubiquitous.

Of course, the more aggressive Google gets, the more the antitrust authorities may be sniffing round its door, so executives were careful to repeat their standard defense - "competition is one click away" and web services will run on any client OS. It did not detail how it will make money from Chrome OS, but presumably by further stimulating web-based activity and therefore mobile advertising and premium services.

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