How much of a threat exactly do Google Chromebooks pose to Microsoft?

After years in which it insisted that it had no intention of competing directly with Microsoft, Google is parking its tanks front and centre on Microsoft's lawns. The Chromebook - a "thin client" laptop that will have virtually no local storage - launches today, Wednesday, and is the first serious challenge to the Windows/Office hegemony in two decades.

The Chromebook doesn't run Windows; it runs Google's second operating system (after Android), ChromeOS, which is stripped down so far that it just runs a browser and associated programs. No Windows. No Microsoft Office. No Microsoft anything, in fact. ChromeOS is a Linux-based system that Google has been working on since 2009. And now it's becoming real, through "Chromebooks" from Samsung and Acer (and also, unofficially, from the Australian company Kogan, which is sellingthem in Australia and the UK).

Yet to begin with, the threat to Microsoft, and the promise to Google, from Chrome is minimal. First, the Chromebook is not aimed at the average consumer. It's aimed at the enterprise customers who are Microsoft's bread and butter. Google, with the Chromebook, is aiming to eat Microsoft's lunch - and its dinner and breakfast too. How? By nibbling away at Windows and Office revenues by finding the companies that have finally had enough of Office upgrades, and aren't that keen on the Windows upgrade cycle - and associated costs - either. The other target: schools - where Microsoft first gets its customers.

Chrome is, make no mistake, a dagger poised over Microsoft's heart. The only question is whether it's made of steel or rubber.

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