GDC11: Google charms attendees with free laptops

Google has kept up on its annual tradition of GDC hardware giveaways by handing out free Cr-48 Chrome OS laptops to all those who sat in on one of the two company sessions on in San Francisco yesterday.

The laptops represent what Google is calling its ‘still nascent effort at a standalone computer OS’. Both Google GDC sessions were detailing the ongoing work on the company’s upcoming operating system.

This year’s giveaway marks the third of such handouts from Google, following last year’s free HTC Evo 4G mobile phones and 2009’s HTC Magic phones for those who sat in on the firm’s sessions.

Google has said that the Cr-48 laptops do not represent a device intended for sale, but rather a continuation of the hardware shown as part of the Chrome OS pilot program last December, which were ‘a way for developers to create Web applications that would run on the OS.’

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