Week in Review: Google Chrome OS

The big news this week didn't come from Microsoft's PDC conference, but from Google's cleverly timed reveal of its Chrome operating system.

Google made the code open source, so if you're into that sort of thing you can go poke around in it, contribute to the end product, or make your own.

For the rest of us, we need to wait a year for devices running the OS to get created. Those devices will be pretty specific, too. Google wants netbook like machines, but with bigger keyboards and better screens we've long wanted a netbook like that, too, actually.

The Google OS devices will only have SSD, and only run web apps so it's rather brick-like when connectivity is down.

Click here for our collection of screenshots of the strange new world Google seems to think we want.

Microsoft PDC

Microsoft had a few things to unveil this week as well. The Redmond beast made betas of Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Silverlight 4 and more available to the public.

Microsoft also said its cloud computing system Azure would arrive on 1 January, and unveiled that IE9 is already way, way better than IE8. Well, good. Why would you make it worse?

Bad T-Mobile

It was a bad week for T-Mobile and its customers. The Information Commissioner's Office revealed that it was investigating a mobile operator for selling off data on its customers, but wouldn't say which one.

Given there's only five big players, it didn't take too long to get a confession from T-Mobile, which admitted employees had sneakily stolen data and sold it onto brokers. While it said it was very, very sorry for all the trouble, it did point its metaphorical finger at its four rivals, saying such behaviour is rampant across the industry.

The best of the rest

Salesforce.com spouted off about cloud computing at its San Franciscan Dreamforce conference, taking digs at its rivals and unveiling social networking tool Chatter.

Peter Mandelson continued his crusade against illegal file sharing, unveiling disconnection rules in the Digital Economy Bill and asking the house leader for superpowers to battle the evil, dastardly pirates hurting our poor economy. No, we mean illegal file sharers, not bankers.

In Twitter news, founder Biz Stone said corporate accounts are going to happen, and Orange is offering MMS updates direct from your phone. And, survey says Twitterers are all left-wing, London-based, youngsters.