With an unexpected move, at the end of last week Parallels announced support for the upcoming Google operating system, Chrome OS, in its Desktop 5 for Mac.
While it’s entirely expected that consumers use desktop virtualization platforms to test new operating systems, it’s pretty uncommon to see a vendor that officially supports a beta product that is not widely deployed like Windows.
Considering the long beta cycles that Google products have (sometimes years), the effort to support multiple beta builds will be remarkable for Parallels.
The first stable release for Chrome OS is not expected to arrive before the second half of 2010.