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With its new Chrome OS operating system, Google has fallen into its characteristic trap of being long on vision but short on clear tactics. It is clear that the browser-as-OS fits perfectly into the firm's long-held vision of turning the 'fat client' PC into a pared-down appliance with all its data and services in the cloud. But in terms of where the first 'Chromebooks' will actually be targeted, Google has been a web of mixed messages. At various times, the promised devices have been presented as netbooks on steroids, an even more web-friendly iteration of the tablet, or tools for emerging economies. The latest direction is to go right after the heartland of the Microsoft PC, the enterprise.

Last week, Google announced a slew of features for the Chrome browser and OS, designed to appeal to hard-pressed corporate IT administrators. Amid reports that the Apple iPad and other tablets are, even at this early stage, attracting attention as a PC alternative, Google will be keen to talk up its own credentials for easing the IT manager's burden.

All of these can be used simply with the Chrome browser on a PC or Mac, but they are also usable with the full Chrome OS environment, and the timing of the launch - just after the first prototype Chrome OS notebooks - is unlikely to be coincidental.

The GigaOM blog points out the connections, quoting a post by Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, about the vision of a cloud-based enterprise. He wrote: "While many IT vendors have now adopted (or co-opted) the term 'cloud computing' to describe a wide variety of technologies, most don't deliver on the true promise of the cloud. Hosting single-tenant server products in a data center is not cloud computing. Nor is requiring customers to install thick client software. In a 100% web world, business applications are delivered over the internet and accessed in a web browser. Devices like notebooks, tablets, and smartphones are portals to the data that help people be productive from anywhere, at any time."

He concluded with a claim that could be the marketing slogan for the Chromebook, and other web-based platforms like MeeGo and HP's own Palm webOS. "If 2010 was the year of the cloud, 2011 looks to be the year of nothing but the web."

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