Apple might have dominated the news last week with its iPad announcement, but the company hardly has a monopoly on the burgeoning media tablet market. Last night, Glen Murphy, who does user interface for Google, blogged about some Chrome OS-based tablet ideas that Google has been toying with.
Apparently, these mockups went live on Google’s developer site last Monday (two days before the iPad announcement), but no one noticed. To be clear, these are mockups and concepts — not actual products. However, the ideas in these mockups and UI concepts might be used in real products in the future.
The concept UI for a Chrome -based tablet device is interesting. You can see the whole set of photos here and check out the video concept below:

As CNET notes, the Chromium project (that’s the open source component that makes up Chrome) states on its Form Factors Exploration page that the primary focus for Chrome OS is still netbooks, but that it is conceivable that the platform could scale to a number of different devices and corresponding input options.

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Why Chrome OS Makes Sense in a Tablet

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Some may question why Chrome OS would be a target for tablet or media pad devices rather than something like Android (), but I think that a web-centric OS is the perfect complement to the tablet form factor.
A few months ago I wrote a piece about the Chrome OS announcement:

“This is what I see [Chrome OS being used for]: Something like a tablet but with a more defined purpose: like call it a media pad. Something you could use as a remote control, for instance — an eBook reader (that isn’t as good as eInk) and a visual TV guide. Yeah, you can watch online content and surf the web, but it’s designed to sit on your sofa and be like what we use phones for now — but bigger and with the understanding that you need to be online at all times.”

After seeing what Apple has planned for the iPad, I think more and more companies are going to warm to the idea of offering an Internet-focused tablet or media pad. Chrome OS is in a great position to power some of those devices.
What do you think about Google’s tablet concepts? Let us know!