Google Chrome OS and the Microsoft EC case re: browser integration

Hmm, working with the early developer preview of Chrome OS recently got me thinking how this whole rigamarole with Microsoft and the EC regarding the "tie-in" of Internet Explorer in Windows is a farce (or will be, when we look back on it 5 years from now). Microsoft is being penalized and told to 'jump through a few hoops' by making other browsers equally available) because the inclusion of a browser as part of the OS is unfair competition...

I'm not denying that this action on Microsoft's part has hurt other browser makers. The point I'm making is that developing on an OS that is driven by 1 company, could turn out to be a hazardous business if the company owning the OS decides to rewrite the rules. Since they own the OS, you could argue that it's within their right to do so.

Now in that light, what are we to make of Google Chrome OS? Talk about shutting out the competition, there is no (easy) way to use another browser on that OS (or any other application for that matter). Quite clever of course, because no one's ever going to (be able to) complain that you cannot use a browser of your choosing on it and that it is unfair competition. Since its a free Open Sourced OS, there is no competition, so no unfair practices here. In fact, Google is even tapping into the large pool of OS programmers (and apparently some of them related to Ubuntu) to help them speed up development of the OS.

I'm sure that Chrome OS will carve out a nice piece of the Netbook market once it's ready for prime time, if the initial publicity and buzz on the Net are anything to go by. The current early releases already show amazingly fast boot times and the Chrome browser, well its pretty fast too.

So what then if Chrome OS carves out a big enough piece of the ever growing Netbook market and becomes a secondary defacto standard OS? Or can we even call it an OS? In essence it is Just enough OS to support their Chrome browser. Would we see a renewed discussion on unfair practices, this time starring Google??

Interesting times ahead indeed...