Google is often described as a “search giant” but the Silicon Valley company is branching into other areas including hardware as evidenced by the recently introduced Nexus One smartphone.
HardwareCentral has the story on what may be Google’s next effort, a tablet computer that would once again put the company at odds with its sometime partner Apple.
Less than a week after Apple unveiled its long-anticipated tablet, its growing nemesis Google has decided to stir things up by posting photos of a mock-up tablet running its own Chrome OS.
With some of the complaints about the iPad around its lack of flexibility and multitasking capabilities, there might still be a space to grab the tablet market from Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) hands. And as Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) finds itself on an apparent collision course with Apple through its Nexus One phone, Android OS and Chrome, a tablet seems the next likely battlefield.
But the mock-ups are just that. There is no product formally in the works from Google. There are a number of form factor mock-ups on the Chrome developers’ forum, including netbooks, notebooks, and desktops.
Given the open-source nature of Chrome OS, it would be possible for any device maker to take the operating system and adapt it for their hardware, just as several have done with Chrome OS-powered netbooks.
