Google will eventually take over the world. Oh, sure, we delude ourselves into believing otherwise, but deep down inside we know that one day, gLife will come out of beta.

Everyone thought the biggest news to come out of the Googleplex yesterday was the announcement that four of the company's most popular offerings — Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Talk — have left their long-held beta status behind, though the change appears to be mostly cosmetic, given the services well-established, if sometimes momentarily questioned, reliability. That news was, however, merely a foretaste of what was to come, as late last night the search giant revealed that it has even greater ambitions: to revolutionize the operating system.

According to the announcement, co-authored by Engineering Director Linus Upson and Product Management Vice President Sundar Pichai, Google believes that the operating systems currently on the market were "were designed in an era where there was no web," a fatal flaw, apparently, given the number of people who "live on the web," busily "searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends." Taking a cue — and the name — from it's 30,000,000+ strong web browser, Chrome, the company will develop an operating system to be christened Google Chrome OS.