Google reveals Chrome OS partners

By Erica Ogg on 09 July 2009, 11:17am

Google has now named the companies it's working with to bring its Chrome OS operating system to netbooks next year.

In a post on the Chrome blog on Wednesday afternoon, Google vice president of product management Sundar Pichai said the company is working with a variety of PC and chip makers, as well as another software company. Among the companies are Acer, Adobe, Asus, Freescale, HP, Lenovo, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

Asus is an obvious partner, since it was the pioneer of the netbook category and has shown its willingness to work with other operating systems outside of Windows. Acer also sounds right, since it's the fastest-growing laptop maker, and has shown plenty of flexibility in pricing models to move netbooks off store shelves. HP, of course, is the world's largest provider of PCs and should be part of any conversation about consumer-focused operating systems.

The company that's notably missing from the list is Dell, the world's second-largest PC maker. When contacted by CNET UK sister site CNET News, Dell didn't indicate that it was actively working with Google on Chrome OS. The company would only say: "Dell constantly assesses new technologies as part of managing our product-development process and for consideration in future products."