Google has finally unveiled its much-anticipated operating system, Chrome OS, at a press conference in San Francisco, on December 7th. Expected to battle head-to-head with Apple’s industry-shaping iOS (that powers a limited number of Apple-specific devices in the guise of the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone), Chrome OS will adopt the one-software-fits-all ideology of Google’s Android system.

It is expected to be commercially available in about six months, and is based entirely on Linux, with an interface that strikingly resembles the popular and fast Chrome browser (which is bound to lead many to confusion over the two similarly-named, slightly-different-yet-the-same products from Google).

Where Apple has decided on pushing the native app approach through its online store, the App Store, Google’s announcement of its web app store marketplace focuses on propounding its efforts into cloud computing and web applications. This fundamental difference is a stage set for yet another great Silicon Valley showdown of two titans of the computing world. Google has also announced its new online store to be launching with 500 web apps.

Now, where Apple’s apps can only be used on a compatible iOS device, Google’s web apps, built solely with popular web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, can essentially be run on any system through the Chrome browser.

So, in essence, this whole fanfare of the “Chrome OS” is actually just a glorified version of the Chrome browser (now already on v10 after a very short spell in the cyber world). But the introduction of Chrome OS does indeed push the possibilities of web apps playing a larger role in our daily computing lives.

Think of it as a grand showcase of all the “new web” has to offer — Chrome OS and its web app strategy has the potential to show to the wider world, in the same way Apple did with mobile apps, the power of web applications; that the web is more than just for checking Facebook and emails — now, you can write your student paper at school, and return to it on your own PC when at home, all thanks to the always-there nature of the Cloud.

So what do you make of Google’s Chrome OS? Let us know in the comments section below.