Google has today announced that they are working on a "natural extension" to their Chrome browser, The Google Chrome operating system (OS).

This is pretty exciting news for those of us who are passionate about the web and what it can do. The prospect of an operating system built around exploiting the best from the web is an interesting prospect indeed.

According to Google it is intended to be a fast, lightweight, and open source operating system. The code is going to be released to the open source community later this year according to their blog, and we are likely to see net books coming packaged with the new Chrome OS late 2010.

Obviously this also signifies a further increase in the intensity of the battle between the search giant and their rival Microsoft, who just recently launched their new search engine Bing in an attempt to capture more than their current (small) share of the search market.

It also comes hard on the heels of the roll out of some of the first Google Android (mobile operating system) mobile handsets.

While it is going to be a while until we see this come to fruition, things are certainly getting interesting!

For more information see the official Google blog.