With the dust settling on Google’s announcement of its first PC operating system there are two main areas that stand out.

Firstly, it is not the threat to Microsoft that commentators are trumpeting – Google is targeting the netbook market with Chrome OS. While this is growing (21 million units this year according to Gartner) it is less than 10 per cent of the estimated 278 million PCs sold. And a large chunk of netbooks already use Linux, around which Chrome is based. So there’s a fair dose of hype in the ‘this drops a bomb on Windows’ comments.

The interesting thing behind Chrome is how it aims to bring Linux and cloud computing into the mainstream. Consumers generally haven’t got involved with Linux (even Firefox has only 20 per cent of the browser market) and if Chrome is to succeed it’ll need to change that. As a lean, web-based OS it’ll also need to convince people that the Cloud is the best place to store their data and applications. These are the challenges Google has to overcome – time to focus its PR on consumers if Chrome is to take off.