By Chris Chang, posted Mar 29, 2011 at 1:10 PM, 458 views,

Baidu’s New Mobile Operating System Coming, to Resemble Chrome OS?

It’s taken them a good while, but Baidu finally revealed its plans to develop a light operating system for mobile devices that uniquely focuses on search, and maybe, work exclusively with web applications, just like Google’s Chrome OS. Anything you want to do on the web could be done by just starting from a search box. Yeah, this is interesting.

According to Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive, the company will be creating software that enables users to access a web search box within a second of starting their smartphone or tablet computer.

“In order for an operating system to work, it needs to [do a lot of processing], but if we make it just about a search box, then the task will be much simpler,”

Will it be something like an app? Well, probably not.

“Right now when you power on an iPhone, it takes 45 seconds before you can do anything. In the future, one second, you turn on the device, and you can start using the box. That’s our mission for the future of the internet,”

Well, I never switch off my iPhone once in a month… That will be five seconds for me to press the home button, slide to unlock, tap the Safari icon, and start browsing the web. Or I can just access the Spotlight search menu. Anyway, Baidu aimed to create the system in three to five years from now, and the system is aimed at consumers who mainly use their smartphones or tablets to access the internet. Surprisingly, a web browser and a media player are the system’s only applications.

Actually, Robin Li had this wild idea for quite a while. He wanted to transform the search box, the frame where internet users can enter the keywords they want to search for, into a universal computing tool that could replace all other interfaces. Here’s what he said:

“The goal is to let people become increasingly dependent on the Baidu box,”

Wow. We are wondering if Baidu will work something out with Facebook, since the social media is the new internet trend.

Source: CNBC