But not everyone will benefit, he said. "The real loser today is Microsoft. Shared development accelerates time to market and innovation, bringing better products to consumers and better returns to companies."

Canonical Ltd., maker of the popular Ubuntu Linux, revealed today that it has .

Canonical said it is unafraid of potential cannibalization. "While the two operating systems share some core components, Google Chrome OS will provide a very different experience to Ubuntu," wrote Chris Kenyon, Canonical's vice-president for OEM services.

"Ubuntu will continue to be a general-purpose OS running both Web and native applications such as OpenOffice and will not require specialized hardware," he said.