Rather exciting news was announced this week, with Google taking on the challenge of creating an operating system to rival Mac OS and Windows. They’ve stated that they will release an open source version later this year for developers to modify and play with it, and potentially improve it, with a finished version set to launch next year.

It’s planned that it’ll be designed for netbooks in its early stages, with plans to move it into the desktop world as well. Now, with me being a staunch supporter of all things Mac, you wouldn’t have thought I’d particularly welcome this news. But you’d be wrong. For one I’m very pleased that there’ll be another contender to hopefully bring down some of Microsoft’s dominance in the marketplace, and have the software arena back to being as fair game as possible. Maybe it will force Microsoft to stop being so sloppy in its developing and create a piece of software that isn’t bug-ridden and crash-happy.

The other reason is portability, when it comes to netbooks. As things stand right now, I wouldn’t dream of owning a netbook with Windows on it, as I totally dislike Windows and all it stands for. I do however like the functionality that some netbooks bring, size wise. So if there was the opportunity of having a low cost mini-laptop available that can run Google Chrome OS, I’d be tempted to have one as a secondary laptop.

Which leaves me to ask the questions – do you welcome this new addition to the OS market? Will you be running it yourself on your laptop/netbook? Do you think having a new contender is a good idea, or will it just fall on it’s face as a bit of a fad?

You decide….