If you ask some people, they’ll tell you that the netbook is dead. They’ll tell you that you’re better off choosing between a full-sized laptop or one of the new tablet devices. Well, you may soon have a suitable alternative to the MacBook Air as your netbook, because Google is hosting an event that could see the revealing of the Chrome OS netbook.

There was so much talk about this lightweight operating system for so long and then it drifted off into the background. The attention is being diverted back and the Google event on December 7 could be the venue for its unveiling. As a quick refresher, Chrome OS focuses almost exclusively on cloud computing, making for very little heavy lifting on the part of the netbook itself; everything is handled by Google’s servers.

The idea is that the netbook doesn’t need much and the Atom processors making their way around most netbooks would suit this OS just fine. The rumor is that the initial rollout of the Chrome OS netbook (NexusBook, maybe?) will be on a friends and family basis, shipping about 65,000 units worldwide. After that trial phase, Google can then decide whether it wants to go mass market with this thing.

[Gizmodo]