Chrome OS, the much hyped operating system developed by search engine giant Google, may come out in December this year, but only in beta version. It is to be noted that Google has said about the release of its Chrome OS several times, but the official launch of the OS has been deferred on numerous occasions because of one reason or another.

The project had been announced by Google in 2009 and the OS was slated to be launched in November 2010, which did not happen. Not so long ago, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said during Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that there are still some more months to go before the launching of Chrome OS.

The news might halt devices manufactured by Acer, HP, Lenovo, Toshiba, Asus that were to be equipped with Chrome OS. The aforementioned companies were to roll out netbooks using Chrome OS during the fourth quarter of 2010. Chrome OS is an open source platform mainly targeted for notebooks. However Google officials said that the project is very much on track and they are happy with the progress of the OS. More details about the OS will be shared later this year.