In an out of the blue move, Google has made a Chrome OS Beta available to the world. There's an ISO as well as a vmdk (usable in VMware and Virtualbox players). Kinda surprisingly, the system looks a lot like a standard linux distro, with GIMP, OpenOffice, and GNOME. Guess we'll see what it looks and feels like when people (including me, 30 minutes left in the download) get their hands on it.

Update: Either a scam or bad marketing, this wasn't an official google release of any kind and the small print clearly stated that. Definitely designed to look as official as possible though. Sorry for jumping the gun there folks.