Messrs. Schmidt and Page were also careful not to position Chrome as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. They argued that Chrome will expand the market for netbooks, rather than eating into Windows’ share of the netbook market.

Rather than the hubaloo around “of course Chrome is a competitor”, I find the more interesting statment the latter half of that statement — Google’s planning to expand the market for netbooks.  I’ve no idea exactly how they’re going to get as-yet non-existent web-based operating system to drive the market for what is essentially a thin-client technology, but it does make you wonder about the growing relationship between Intel and Google … and it also makes you wonder exactly how important the hardware relationships it has with its other potential vendors, and how, precisely, this particular free OS pre-installed will be different (and *grow* a market segment)  than the *other* free OS pre-installed.