Google has officially announced on 7th July 2009,  that the next Chrome project will be an Operating System. As Google has stated this project will be “a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System”.
Google has also specified that

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community…”

Main characteristics of the Google Chrome OS project:

• open source;
• will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips;
• different from Android, the OS for mobile devices;
• software architecture — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel;
• “for application developers, the web is the platform”;

Another characteristic from the official announcement, “Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web” makes me think that in the beginning the OS project is intended for devices that are used most of the time for Internet applications. Maybe the objective is to provide a software platform (OS and browser – both named Chrome) that will provide a very efficient (boot time, required resources) environment for Internet based applications.