Will the launch of Chrome OS - Google's free, lightweight, Linux-based PC operating system - finally mark the beginning of the end for Windows' dominance on the x86 desktop? "Probably not" is the informed opinion of market insiders.

In effect, Chrome OS (due in the second half of 2010) will attach one of the world's most prominent brand names to an existing version of Linux. And while Linux doesn't have a lot of popularity in the desktop arena today (1% to 2% market share, according to various analyst estimates), it is uncertain if the Google brand is enough to change the OS landscape, says Steve Nunn, director of global desktop offerings at Fujitsu.

Linux fillip

"We expect any Chrome OS adoption to be at the expense of other Linux distributions and maybe some consumer releases of Windows," he says. "We might see a sudden spurt in Linux's popularity, but this is likely to drop off."

From a business perspective, an OS is simply a vehicle to deliver business applications and hence business functions, he adds. "While the ability to deliver entire environments via a web-based platform has been around for a while, there's been very little take-up."

Browser pointer

One key indicator of Chrome OS's potential lies in the fact that Google has struggled to make serious inroads into the browser market since it launched the Chrome browser in late 2008. In the consumer space, Google has a small market share (2.6%, according to market watcher Net Applicatons) but that trails Mozilla Firefox (22%) and is way behind the corporate standard, Internet Explorer (68%).

"Extrapolate that to the operating system (which some people believe will soon be little more than a browser anyway) and there is no reason to believe that Google Chrome OS will make any significant difference," says Nunn.

What the launch will do, he says, is further open up the question of whether the choice of operating system is a serious business issue any more. "It's not," he says. "The real questions are, can the platform be efficiently delivered - and can it run the applications that make my business work?"