Ever since Google announced plans to launch a new computer operating system called Chrome OS a few months, we've seen an onslaught of so-called "leaked" screenshots of the operating system. But last night the Google Chrome Browser team posted a message on Twitter linking to a Google Chrome OS preview that looks like it could be the real deal.

Update 2 (see update 1 below): OK, it's almost definitely fake. The Twitter account in question is not affiliated with Google. Nice looking fake though.

The video makes the OS look slick, polished,and definitely looks like a web-based operating system based on the Chrome Browser. The only reason I'm still a bit skeptical is because the video was uploaded in July and the Tweet doesn't say explicitly that this is the real thing.

It looks like you'll have to login to Chrome OS with your Google Account credentials. Once you're in you're presented with a browser window and a dock with links to web applications including Gmail, Google Calendar, and GTalk. There's also a program launcher which gives you access to more applications, including Skype and other programs that I'm assuming need to run from the desktop, so Chrome OS isn't all about web applications.

The video also shows a chess match, which looks like it's being played with another user through Google Wave. Google Chrome OS is designed to be run as a netbook operating systems at launch and should be available as a developer preview later this year. It could show up on mini-laptops in 2010. You can find another photo and a video after the break.

Update: CrunchGear, which spotted this story before we did, determines that the video is fake since the chess match is identical to one being played in a Google Wave promotional image. That doesn't really mean anything though. It could just be the same shot used in two promos. But the fact that the video was posed in July still gives me reason for pause.

You may have heard that Google is putting together a little operating system called Google Chrome Operating System. The idea is to extend the work Google has already put into the Google Chrome web browser and build a light weight OS that can run on x86 or ARM processors. The goal is to have an OS that can boot and get you online in a matter of seconds, while most of the applications will be web-based.

And that makes sense, because most of Google's applications are web-based. Think Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Reader, and so on. Heck, even Google's desktop applications like Picasa and Google Desktop have online components.

In the official blog post announcing Google Chrome Operating System, Google also mentions that all development for the platform will be web-based. So if you want to create a new office suite or a farting application, you'll write it for the web, and the apps will be available for Chrome, Windows, Mac, or Linux.

What remains to be seen is whether Google Chrome will run any desktop applications at all. The operating system will be based on the Linux kernel, but that doesn't mean it will be able to run Linux applications like OpenOffice.org, or Pidgin.

The web-app approach makes a lot of sense for netbooks, cheap portable computers that are generally considered secondary PCs instead of primary machines. Because if your email, office documents, and other data are stored on the web, there's no need to continually synchronize your data between a netbook and your primary machine. And in fact, Google says that netbooks will be some of the first devices to run the operating system, with Chrome-powered netbooks due out in the second half of 2010.

But would you be happy running web apps as your only applications on your primary computer? Or even on a secondary machine. What happens when you're on an airplane without WiFi? Does your computer become useless?