A nuclear bomb? Come on, they didn't even release a direct competitor to Microsoft's OS. Yes, I'm sure it will be streamlined and efficient and very well designed for web apps and things programmed for it, but it still doesn't replace a Windows desktop machine because of its inherently different architecture.
No, you're right, it doesn't. But if you take all of the pieces that Google have been assembling over the past few years - Chrome Browser & OS, Docs & Spreadsheets (ie. Apps), Gmail, Android, NaCl, etc... these all add up to a very slick platform that ticks a lot of boxes.
For a very large number of people, a cheap PC/netbook/tablet thing with a browser that can do web, email, light word processing & spreadsheets, boots in 2-3 seconds and costs $150 would be ideal. I'd buy one.
Chrome OS + Chrome Browser + Google Apps puts Google in a position to deliver this, using super light & cheap ARM netbooks, taking them to a place which Microsoft will find it very hard to follow. This puts them in a position to take away a pretty large proportion of MS's home users, who are currently running a ~2-3yr old PC with XP on it for these tasks.
The current state of the Chrome browser on Linux would make this "web OS" the equivalent of Windows 3.11. In it's current state, there is really no way to compare Chrome and Chromium and claim they represent the same kind of polished product. Chromium had so much issues with stability and performance, that I had to give up on it. I took a short detour by Opera, before Firefox 3.5 became usable, and I was back where I started.
If I were going to make a web OS, even for netbooks, I would rather have it use Firefox 3.5 as performance is much more predictable and reliable, not to mention it can be extended with addons, something I would consider a minimum for any platform.
One word: games. Consoles have really stepped it up, but a lot of people still use Windows at least partially because of hardware accelerated 3D gaming. I don't see that being Google's netbook OS focus, or many people porting such things to web apps, obviously. Unless they have some secret alliance with OnLive ;-)
Google has the O3D API, browser-based access to 3D graphics, presumably hardware-accelerated for machines that have it. http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/.
DirectX has done almost as much, if not more, to preserve the Windows moat as MS Office has (moat in the sense that Warren Buffet says it). Many people buy Windows (or steal it) just to play games, just as many businesses stick with Windows because MS Office is the resume-standard office suite and VB apps are so easy to hammer out.
Really it'd be nice if either a) game developers switched to OpenGL, or b) the open source community came up with something better than DirectX from the developer perspective, creating a natural impetus to switch.
(Yes, I am being entirely selfish here, as I'd like to stop dual-booting for my non-Wine games.)
