By any metric, a 40% year-over-year growth rate is impressive.

For the netbook market, that number has enabled it to zoom to 22% market share in a very short period of time.

That said, now we know why Google announced the Chrome OS vaporware recently.

That same 40% growth number!

Think about it: since Microsoft is ably gunning for Google’s (only) cash cow with the rejuvenated Bing, a way for Google to deflect that thrust, and expand the market at the same time would be to introduce a new OS that would immediately ease one of the pain points of the participants (aka OEMs) in this space: the cost of an operating system.

However, will consumers bite?

Joe Wilcox talks about netbooks here.

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