What is an operating system, really? When most people think about computers, they think about desktop features, file hierarchies, word processing, spread sheets, and most importantly the internet. It’s no coincidence that Google has created Google Desktop (a collection of cool widgets and a powerful file search engine), Google Docs (word processing and spread sheets), and finally Google Chrome (the fastest way to browse the internet). Over the years, it always seemed like Google was randomly coming out with these great services, but if you were connecting the dots along the way, you would see that Google has been building an OS all along. The purpose of this post is to briefly cover the three major releases that Google has launched since Google Search, and explore how they fit together with Google’s vision of the future for operating systems, the Google Chromium OS.