Acer continue Google collaboration with Chrome OS laptop plans

Acer’s journey with Google into new territory looks like continuing with the announcement that it will be bringing a netbook laptop running the Chrome OS in Q3 2010.

The announcement was made by Jim Wong, Senior Corporate Vice President and President of IT Product Business Group at Acer, who stated that the company was looking to shift over one million Chrome-based laptops in 2010.

The move would signal another step along the path to seeing Google begin to spread its OS from smartphones to netbooks, with the simplistic platform likely to gain widespread acceptance from a number of manufacturers.

Such is the belief in the Chrome OS that Acer is stating that the platform will be used in ’7% of all its netbook shipments in 2010′, which would be impressive should the refined laptop come around September.

During the interview, Wong also confirmed the company will be creating an app store for the netbook to download easy to use widgets, and the portal will also carry apps that can be used on the company’s burgeoning smartphone range.

New Google Chrome beta browser released

Google’s beta version of their Chrome web browser has now been released as is living up to its billing as being faster than the rest.

Google claim it is up to 30% quicker than other browsers, and some industry testing has already proven it to be double the speed of Firefox 3.5 and around 8x faster than IE8.

Perhaps more interesting for non-speed junkies are some design and functionality touch-ups. Immediately obvious will be the redesigned new tab page, which allows users to pin their favourite sites to the ‘Most Visited’ slots and collapse information they don’t want displayed. The Omnibox (url/google search bar) also gets a spit and polish to offer Firefox-esque drop down suggestions as you type, while basic downloadable themes have been added to Chrome ahead of its much anticipated third party extensions.

To check out Google Chrome beta, head to: http://chrome.blogspot.com/

We’ll put an end to viruses, say Google

Google’s Engineering Director has promised that its upcoming Chrome OS will see ‘the end of malware’.

Linus Upson, Google’s ED, has promised the company is: “Completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

Ironically, Google is also in the news this week due to security flaws in its Chrome browser.

Two of the most recent Google Chrome web browser security flaws (one relating to malicious code exploitation in the Chrome tab sandbox and one relating to memory corruption in the browser tab processes) have now been fixed.

You can see the full run-down of all the latest changes over on Google’s Chrome site.

Robert Caunt, an analyst from CCS Insight in London, notes that Google has a good record on security to date: “Its Gmail spam filter and search engine’s phishing-detection is good. They know what needs doing.”

Major computing brands such as Nvidia, Dell, Asus, Acer and others have already confirmed that they will be fully supporting Google’s Chrome OS.