• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 11, 2011

Hardware manufacturers Acer and Samsung have partnered with Google to offer Chrome OS notebooks to consumers for a flat fee, and to businesses and students for a monthly subscription. Consumers will have an option to purchase the Chromebooks at Best Buy and Amazon in the U.S. beginning June 15. Hardware and software updates are inclusive.

For consumers, Samsung will offer a Chrome OS notebook with a 12.1-inch high-definition (HD) display with a price tag starting at $225, compared with Acer's 11.6-inch HD display with a price tag starting at $349. The Samsung version runs on an Intel Atom dual-core processor. The devices will offer Wi-Fi and 3G cellular service. All applications run in the cloud.

There are 160 million active users on Chrome today -- up from 70 million during last year's I/O conference, according to Google. Google released a test version of the Chrome OS notebook -- codename Cr-48 -- in December, but made the announcement official Wednesday at its I/O annual developer conference in San Francisco.

Monthly subscriptions are priced at $28 per user for business; for students, $20. The notebook will become available in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Germany. Since all applications run in the cloud, Google claims that benefits not available through other operating systems, such as Chromebooks, boot up in eight seconds. Web sites load quickly, and the chance of the computer contracting a virus is eliminated through technology known as sandboxing, data encryption and verified boot.

3G models include a free 100 MB per month of mobile data from Verizon Wireless. In addition to the Chrome OS notebook, the Google I/O 2011 keynote on Wednesday announced several updates to Chrome, Chrome Web Store and Chrome OS.

In-app payments with one line of code embedded in the application allow consumers to make seamless purchases from within applications. An application built by Graphicly Digital Comics demonstrates how people reading a comic book can purchase the book as they read and explore the content without leaving the platform. The application will cost developers 5%, compared with Apple's 30% share for applications in the App Store.

News from game maker Rovio at Google I/O points to bringing Angry Birds from mobile to the Web at about 60 frames per second on the Chrome browser. The game maker will use WebGL, and a canvas version that will work on other browsers. For those offline, the game maker will allow consumers to play the complete game through Chrom Web app offline storage. Earlier this month Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka told Finnish business daily Kauppalehtithe company is eying an initial public offering (IPO).