Bill Gates has written off Google's Chrome OS as just another Linux distro.

Talking to CNET Gates said that there are many, many forms of Linux operating systems out there and packaged in different ways and booted in different ways. Bill said that he was surprised people are acting like there's something new. “I mean, you've got Android running on Netbooks. It's got a browser in it.”

He added that it was hard to really say much about Chrome OS, since Google has said so little about how it will actually work. Gates pointed out that the more vague Google was about Chrome OS the more interesting the press reports were.

Statements like “the browser needs to act more like an OS” were sooooo 1990's, Gates said. The the browser has already become an extremely broad concept, with all of the plug-ins and other things that are now done inside a browser.

“Browser has become a truly meaningless word... What's a browser? What's not a browser? If you're playing a movie, is that a browser or not a browser? If you're doing annotations, is that a browser? If you're editing text, is that a browser or not a browser? In large part, it's more an abuse of terminology than a real change," he said.

Certainly Microsoft will lose nothing from another Linux OS system in the market.

More here.