Google Chrome OS to Favor Keyboard Input over Touch, CEO Eric Schmidt Claims

There's been quite a lot of talk about Google forthcoming operating system for portable computing systems (yeah, we're talking about the fabled Chrome OS here), and while the whole world is still waiting for its official launch, as well as the impact this web-centric OS will have on the operating systems' market as we know it, Google's own CEO has decided to fuel a bit the fire of our collective curiosity, providing a few more hints regarding what we might expect from it in terms of input.

So, as Electronista informs us, during the Web 2.0 summit, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, provided some interesting insights into the control option of choice for this next-gen OS, and although just about everyone was probably expecting an extensive support for touch-control solutions (implemented in most of today's Internet tablets, but also several PCs and nettops), it seems that Google has a different opinion on the matter.

So, it seems that the search engine giant designed the operating system to work best when used with computing solutions featuring a hardware keyboard for input, rather than a touch-only configuration.

The reason why Google has decided to focus on hardware keyboards is mostly related to the fact that Chrome OS has been designed specifically to take on the notebook and netbook market, rather than tablets, most of which are doing just fine with the company's Android OS, whose future implementations will deliver an even higher level of compatibility with large-screen mobile devices.

Unfortunately, Google's CEO has not provided any details regarding the exact moment when Chrome OS will become official, but numerous rumors and reports seem to indicate that the respective moment is not too far away (a couple of months tops), the company even preparing a Google-branded smartbook for demo purposes (much in the same way as they did with the G1 smartphone), with other manufacturers to follow suite pretty soon.