Don't Tell Eric Schmidt Google Won't Make Money from Chrome OS

Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't rule out ad-supported and subscription services for applications built on Chrome OS, the search engine giant's forthcoming operating system. The CEO handled several questions about Chrome OS, designed for cloud computing, during the second quarter earnings conference call. Chrome OS is an alternative to Windows and Apple operating systems.

Google's Chrome Operating System, the forthcoming Linux-based platform for netbooks, will be released under an open-source license in 2010, but don't tell Google CEO Eric Schmidt that the company won't make any money off it.

"We do not plan to charge for it, in an open-source form," Schmidt told financial analysts during the second-quarter earnings conference call July 16. "There may be other ways we can make money from it."

For Q2, Google reported a 19 percent profit growth from the year-ago quarter.

Schmidt indicated that while Google hasn't figured out exactly how Chrome OS will make money, some form of ad-supported services or subscription-based micropayments are two options for Google, the bulk of whose $20 billion in annual revenues comes from search advertising.

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GOOGLE Chrome OS

For about a week now, the buzz news has been Google Chrome. No, not the browser, Google Chrome, the operating system.
Suspesions of Google releasing operating system has existed for a long time. When it was leaked that Google was using a modified version of Ubuntu Linux, Goobuntu, the rumor mill went crazy. As it turned out, Goobuntu was for internal use only. Rats.
Then the light of a Google operating system shines once again. This time with a "cloud-based OS" called gOS. Could it be? Google OS? It was chalk full of Google applications. This had to be the messiah of operating systems. But once again, we we're duped. Google only had involvement with gOS, which apparently stood for "good OS". Oh well.
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