Are these the first shots of Google Chrome OS?

Okay, so an anonymous blog with one post isn’t the most reliable source of information but given the interest in Google’s Chrome OS it would be rude of us not to share it.

A blog post has come to light purporting to be written by someone working for a company that supplies parts for Acer laptops. They claim to have been sitting in on a demonstration of Google’s forthcoming OS. Read on for some of the juicy details…

• The OS can install quickly on laptops from late 2007 to early 2008. The install from Vista to Google Chrome OS Dev Beta was only 10 minutes and was very elegant. Only one restart required.
• A wizard asks you for basic info on the first boot up.
• It’s fast. The OS rebooted from Desktop to Desktop in about 25 seconds.
• As far as navigation goes, a button on the ‘Chrome Bar’ pulls up a menu similar to Windows’ Start Menu. The Reboot, Programs, and Main Directory options are located here.
• There are two navigation modes: “Exploration” and “Browser”. Exploration is like Windows Explorer, while Browser uses search options. In Browser Mode, the Google Chrome Browser comes up and you can search and also use the “Most Visited” features for your files.

The post’s author claims he/she took the photos using a small camera when the Google rep’s guard was down.

We are pretty skeptical about this. The screenshots could have been faked in Photoshop in five minutes and the details could very easily be a total work of fiction. Still, given that Google is keen to drum up as much interest as possible in its OS before the rumoured launch of Microsoft’s cloud-based Office next week, this could be a ‘semi-official’ leak.

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You can read more details on the original post here.

UPDATE: Look closely and you’ll notice that the colours for the word ‘Google’ are totally wrong. Don’t you just love these fakes?

UPDATE 2:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uDQJoK12p8