Google's says Microsoft is welcome

Google's Schmidt initially opposed to Chrome, says Microsoft is welcome to port Internet Explorer on over

While Chrome OS is still a pretty rough sketch in our mind's eye, the Google boys have hosted a press conference to answer a few burning questions. Among the myriad revelations, it turns out Eric Schmidt wasn't stoked on building a browser when Sergey Brin and Larry Page brought it up about six years ago, given the fact that Google was still relatively small, and the browser wars were still fresh in everyone's minds. After he saw an early build of Chrome, however, he changed his tune. He says Chrome and Chrome OS are "game-changers," and Larry describes Chrome OS as the "anti-operating system" and indistinguishable from a browser.
Luckily, they also hinted at some native development possibility (hopefully) outside of the browser, stating that Microsoft is free to build a version of Internet Explorer for Chrome OS if they'd like, and that it's an open source project. According to Eric: "Even if we had an evil moment, we would be unsuccessful." He also mentioned there were plenty of "commonalities" between Chrome OS and Android, and that the two might grow even closer over time. Interesting. As for his role on Apple board, Eric will be working out with those folks as to when he needs to recuse himself from OS talk like he already does with iPhone talk. Most of the rest of the talk was spent making old person digs at Schmidt, Mr. BlackBerry himself.

[Via