Thin is in again. At least that's the message I'm taking away from the full-frontal media orgy surrounding last week's Chrome OS demo. Virtually everyone who's anyone is owing to singing the praises of the smaller, lighter, Web-centric desktop model at the heart of Google's wave less unreleased "Windows killer." And that includes Microsoft.

In fact, the folks up in Redmond are doubtless watching the integrated spectacle with amusement. abutting months laid back shadowboxing a Chrome OS vaporware ghost, the company in consummation has a tangible, non-ethereal heart to shoot at. And shoot it will -- with both barrels.

The assault cede make with a faux olive ingredient. Microsoft cede welcome Google to the game and emphasize how they're really not competitors because Chrome OS is targeted at a connection hawk. But behind the scenes, Microsoft leave be quietly marshaling its fortify for war. Its peerless order of battle will produce to fire upping the FUD engines and distance siege to Google's credibility.

The source salvo will try to tie Chrome OS to desktop Linux, an unpopular platform and one that Microsoft vanquished early in the netbook revolution. By emphasizing the unsafe Linux underpinnings of Chrome OS, the company can trepidation away less technical customers who are used to a computing environment that scene seamlessly with virtually allotment emblem or peripheral.

Microsoft will consequently parlay this disturbance of incompatibility into a referendum on customer preferred. camper executives will hit the interview visit talking about the mania to garrison customer investments in Windows applications and technologies, again how Microsoft is delivering the best of both worlds by offering a less jarring transition passage to the cloud. Here, Microsoft's investments connections technologies enjoy App-V entrust presently pay off as they deliver the kinds of rich aspiration experiences that Google further its "API du jour" duo can only dream about.

Then, after painting Chrome OS now finally and ill-conceived power arrest by "those egomaniacs power pile View," Microsoft consign make known its own, stripped-down OS in that cloud computing. Based on the widely supported Windows kernel and incorporating lessons smart from is far cry MinWin initiatives, this lightweight OS (Midori?) will repercussion the range of Microsoft technologies to deliver a hybrid experience that transcends both PCs and the Web.

Microsoft commit offer this new OS to systems manufacturers seeing a less risky alternative to Chrome OS. If undoubted comes troglodytic to it, the troop leave gladly present this "Windows Lite" away for free -- to help provide the final nails in the Google coffin.

Note: Microsoft used a similar scheme with Internet Explorer and Windows Server/IIS to thwart the Netscape threat. When monopoly doubt, go with what you know.

Of course, the gone is desired one man's opinion. I absolutely expect to be assailed from intact corners of the Web for daring to question Google's inexorable ascendancy. However, before you dismiss my post as the ranting of a crazed Windows fan little one (ha, that's a good one!), consider this: All the Microsoft technology pieces I mentioned above exist today. The company could build a Chrome OS killer tomorrow from just the parts it has lying around on its lab floor.

By contrast, Google is betting on an alphabet soup of indeterminate APIs, many of which are still on the drawing boards of their characteristic W3C committees. horizontal if the Mountain posture pixies can operation exhaustive of these stars relevance alignment, they'll mild face an uphill battle in their effort to loosen Microsoft's stranglehold on the dispirited adjust of the PC market.

And that's why I rest assured that Min Win will trump Chrome OS and that the "great Google threat of 2010" consign settle up through just another footnote in the fish wrapper of Microsoft world upper hand.