Google Establishes Engineering Center for Chrome OS in Taiwan

Posted on 31. May, 2011 by Daniel Cawrey in Chrome OS, News

Speaking at this week’s Computex computer conference held in Taipei, Taiwan Chrome VP Sundar Pichai said that Google will be establishing a larger presence there by opening a center devoted to Chrome OS. Although most of the work so far on the cloud operating system has been done in Mountain View, California, Pichai said that he recognizes Taiwan as an important hub for major computer manufacturers.

“We’ve already recruited many engineers and we’re looking forward to hiring many more engineers over the course of next year to ramp up this effort in Taiwan,” said Pichai.

Initial Chrome OS devices, called Chromebooks, will be going on sale starting June 15. The first two Chromebooks will be made by Taiwan’s Acer and Samsung, which is headquartered in South Korea. The majority of the world’s laptops are designed by companies in Taiwan and manufactured through contract companies such as Quanta Computer, Foxconn and Inventec.

Pichai also address the rumors of Chrome OS merging with Android, or appearing on smartphones by saying that Chrome OS will be focus on notebook computers for now. ”We think it’s distinctive of all other operating systems out there, so there are no current plans to converge this with anything else,” he said.

While Computex has largely been influenced by Microsoft and Intel-based devices in the past, there is a movement towards more mobile devices that run ARM processors and devices that run Linux-based operating systems such as Android. In addition to the “Chrome Center” announcement, Google has been flexing its muscle there in the past week, notably with former CEO Eric Schmidt telling the press there that Chrome OS will be successful due to the over 120 million current users of the Chrome browser.

Do you think that Chrome OS will be a success?

via PCWorld, Reuters