I like the announcement. And I can tell you that too many folks aren't looking at what Google is blatantly trying to do...

(a) get software up to speed with users who don't have admin or legacy tech knowledge

(b) take behavioral tracking to other (even more Orwellean) levels

(c) put most companies on notice that its time to stop thinking about what worked in the past and try something new

The Chome OS will be a sore spot more for the Linux crowd than the Windows/MacOS crowd - for now. The OS's aims, while solving a ton of issues conventional users have, still doesn't have a killer feature that will spring wholesale adoption (and this is good for Google and that nice antitrust case coming against them).

What it will do is similar to what Chome has done (and somewhat what webOS has done on the mobile side); it will make folks think about what's really important towards the user experience of computing. It will further take it to the utility end of the spectrum, and it will put all kinds of pressures on the major hardware vendors to get it right in terms of power efficiency and cost faster.

To the folks here, I think it won't hit yet how smart a move this is until Maemo 6/Hamarrtan (sp?). By that point, folks will see that mobile, efficient, directed, and engaging computing is more than niche exclusivity