Google was forced to begrudgingly play the role of Grinch, delaying its Chrome operating system until after the holiday season.  That's disappointing news for holiday shoppers, as it means we won't likely see any 10" tablets from Google, and Windows will retain its netbook monopoly a bit longer.

However, the decision may ultimately be a good one as it will buy Google the time it needs to fix up and perfect its upcoming product.  

Google CEO Eric Schmidt let slip the news of the delay at the Q&A session of the Web 2.0 Summit on November 15.  He said that Chrome would ship in the "next few months."

Google had originally targeted a November-December launch Window when it announced the upcoming operating system last November.  The tentative launch lineups includes netbook and tablet products from Acer, ASUS, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Toshiba.  It is unclear whether that lineup has been changed at all, given the delays.

A Google spokesperson would only say, "We are very happy with the progress of Google Chrome OS, and we'll have more details to share later this year."

Chrome OS is a Linux distribution, but is unusual in that users will exclusively interact with it via the built-in browser.  Programs will run as web apps inside the company's Chrome browser, the world's third most-used browser with 70 million users.  File browsing, word processing, and other common tasks will all be handled via web apps.