‘Gpad’ rumours surface as Google demos Chrome OS

While all eyes were glued to the blockbuster launch of the iPad last week, Apple's newest deadly rival, Google, quietly posted pictures and a video of its soon-to-be released Chrome OS operating system working on a tablet computer.

Coming so soon after rumours that Google is collaborating with Taiwanese electronics company HTC to build a tablet computer prototype, it is being seen as a yet another major challenge to Apple, following the January launch of Google's Nexus One smartphone, an attempt to muscle in on the iPhone's territory.

The Chrome OS demonstration was posted on Google's Chromium Projects development website. In the video (above), which is entirely computer-generated, ghostly hands interact with a touchscreen much larger than the 10-inch iPad, opening and manipulating several browsers with the kind of multi-touch gestures beloved of iPhone users.

Google seems to be developing Chrome OS to recognise at least eight different hand gestures. The project's lead designer Glen Murphy wrote on his personal blog: "You may have seen our Chrome OS tablet concepts from last Monday; in the video, some floating hands interact with a touch surface. We only used one hand image instead of showing the full range of gestures, but I did make a larger set."

A diagram on the Chromium website illustrates the range of screen sizes on which Chrome OS is intended for use - from a 5-10 inch tablet to a 40-60 inch screen.

"While its primary focus is netbooks, Chrome OS could eventually scale to a wide variety of devices. Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power."

Although Chrome OS is most likely to appear first on touchscreen-equipped hardware released by Apple's other rivals, there is reason to suspect it heralds Google's imminent entry into the tablet computer market.

Last month, on the day before Google unveiled the Nexus One, an Australian website began a rumour that HTC, the company which makes the smartphone, had been working on a Chrome OS-equipped tablet computer with Google.

If the rumour has any basis in fact, it is yet another reason why the coming decade in technology is shaping up to be a fight between Google and Apple. ·