A lot has been written today about Google's Chrome OS since it was announced late last night/early this morning, but at least it does look like the web is seeing sense; Chrome OS wont (or rather, shouldn't) destroy Microsoft.

Firstly, Google is aiming for speed and web-orientation with their operating system.
Whilst these seem like worthy plus-points for its OS, they could also be its stumbling blocks when it comes to PC-domination.

They would acheive speed by cutting back on all the "non-essentials" that bog down Microsofts offerings, however, those non-essentials are the kind of things you might need at some stage.
Getting drivers to work with old hardware, legacy support for applications as well as having to ensure that the massive developer framework built around Windows can still function. You may actually need the non-essentials at some point, so an operating system that cuts them out completely may not be viable as your main OS.

Web orientation is a given for a Google OS, however, a fair number of consumers (quite rightly) have serious reservations about cloud computing, so will still stick with their offline OS.

Secondly, adoption. We've already seen swathes of Linux-netbook owners returning their devices because they don't function like their PCs do, this is mainly due to a lack of tech education, but you wont get a new kind of OS through the door without massive support from OEMs, or some killer hardware (e.g. iMac/MacBook for OSX).

Don't get us wrong, we forsee a large number of manufacturers using the Chrome OS in their products, but mass-market adoption seems unlikely in the short to medium term.

We're excited about the possibility of a Google operating system, however, the concept of it being a "Windows killer" is (at the present time) flawed.