Shortly Google announced its Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” which is supposed to be optimized for larger screen portable devices (read: tablets) and Motorola revealed its Honeycomb tablet “Xoom”, HP-Palm revealed a full line of webOS devices, including smartphones of various size (Veer and Pre 3), and the TouchPad which runs webOS 3.0, seemingly taking Honeycomb head on. It might look like webOS has risen from its grave and trying to challenge both Apple (on the hardware side) and Google (on the software side) on the tablet computer battleground. But for a second thought, we found that there will probably be even bigger clash between HP-Palm and Google.

It’s more than Android. We think webOS now is posing grave threat to Google’s other take on OS products: Chrome OS.

Chrome OS, unlike any variety of Android, is designed to work on more portable forms of traditional platform, most obviously netbooks. That positioning used to define it apart from competition against iOS, Android and such, and put it in, if anything, the fight with Microsoft Windows. Horribly hard competition that is, but still Chrome OS has some advantage over a full-fledged desktop OS, especially for highly specified light-weighted works such as browsing, streaming and note taking. The situation has quietly changed however, when HP-Palm announced that webOS is coming to HP *computers* soon.

Frankly we don’t think HP is going to make any webOS-only devices, maybe a couple of netbooks at most, but definitely not seriously depending on it. What’s most likely to happen is that HP bakes webOS into its computers as a dual-boot option, much like Dell’s “MediaDirect” suite that allows users who want no more than a movie or some music to have uber fast booting without bothering with Windows OS. We feel this makes a lot of sense. By doing so, HP achieves the following:

1. Stand up to its archrival Dell toe to toe, but with a far more capable weapon.
2. Avoids pointless and brutal competition with Microsoft, a software maker, and HP’s partner of decades.
3. Adds a lot of value and attraction to HP computers.

On the other hand, while neither HP nor Google seems to be aware of it, webOS coming to PC creates direct competition with Chrome OS. Both of them are products, light-weighted, designed to be applied to a hardware platform that has significantly more mobility over desktops and considerable more horsepower than phones or tablets. Some might argue that Chrome OS, essentially no more than a browser, is even lighter than webOS. But let’s see it this way. 20 grams or 100 grams does not make any difference on 20 meters long granite slab. Current netbooks or mini laptops based earth technology can handle either of them without breaking a sweat.

As to why webOS has the upper hand in the game, our reasoning is as the following:

• Chrome OS is a Linux-based OS built around a browser. webOS is the inventor of this very idea, and has been distributed, used, updated, even loved among the small group of people it has reached so far with next-to-none market budget.
• Chrome OS might be free of licensing fee like most other Google products. However, webOS is the property of HP itself now. “Licensing” isn’t a problem at all in this case.
• Chrome OS boots up super fast. But as a mobile OS to be running on serious hardware, webOS can’t possibly be much slower, if slower at all.
• Chrome OS highlights cloud services. webOS not only highlights them, but also weaves them together with its Synergy function, and makes them really easy to access through its JustType feature.
• It’s hard to deploy Chrome OS on phones or tablets without competing with its brother Android. webOS, on the other hand, could be planted consistently across phones, tablets, PCs, and maybe even printers.
• webOS has got some 5,000 apps already. It’s nothing compared to iOS or Android, inferior even to the infant Windows Phone 7. However, Chrome OS, as of 3:16pm February 11^th 2011, has less than 500 “apps”, that’s including browser extensions.
• The “apps” of Chrome OS are actually wrapped web pages. There are showcases of it running native code, but such product is yet to be seen. webOS also utilizes the ease of development with HTML/JavaScript. But more than that, if a developer finds this too weak for his ambition, he always has the choice of brewing his own magic in C/C++ via the “PDK” of webOS.
• Chrome OS feeds user needs of media consumption and document editing with web tools (Google Docs/streaming), which webOS is also capable of. Aside from that, solid offline media playback and QuickOffice suite earns webOS additional points.
• Most of webOS functions work just as well when the internet is cut off for some unpredictable reason.
• Chrome OS is backed up by the leader of search engine and cloud service provider. But the force behind webOS is one of the world’s biggest computer makers who makes, moves and sells things.

The conflict doesn’t seem apparent at the moment because Chrome OS is still in the lab, and webOS is being revamped for the summer release. But marketing efforts, especially those from Google whose products is now taking disadvantages, could use an earlier start. Or shall Google just take the example, turn Android and it’s impressive app library to real PCs and replace Chrome OS?