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Several websites in China have recently reported the rumor that, despite announcing a few months ago that its operating system would only reach the consumer market in 2010, Google might have chosen to debut its long-awaited Chrome OS as early as next month.

According to Shanzi.com, the hardware manufacturer Lemote might ship its next netbook line running a preview build of the search giant’s new operating system, which is based on the Linux kernel.

Google didn’t comment on the rumors and hasn’t yet made public the scheduled dates for its initial public alpha or beta version of the software, only stating that a developer preview will be made available “by the end of the year” and that the final production version won’t show up on consumer devices until next year.

Ever since Google announced that after entering the highly competitive browser market it would go on to develop its own operating system, a number of screenshots and even a video with a preview of the software have allegedly leaked — with many of them being a clear fake.

According to the latest rumors, the allegedly Chrome OS-powered netbooks will sport a Loongson 2F CPU, based on the MIPS architecture, and should sell for under $200, providing an affordable and portable alternative to some of the common Windows/Intel combination.

Integrating Google’s Chrome on the Loongson-powered devices would make sense as a marketing strategy for the Chinese Lemote to raise awareness to the platform, which isn’t exactly the most acclaimed in the market, and together with the company’s commitment towards open source software might justify the choice of featuring such a new and relatively untested software on their devices.

When you add the fact that MIPS processors are, like with the ARM architecture, typically low-performance but potentially offering great battery life, it’s easy to realize how this would make sense for the lightweight Chrome OS, making these rumors a bit more realistic.

Other unconfirmed rumors include that, on similar lines, both Acer and Hewlett Packard might be launching Chrome-based netbooks before the end of the year. According to Chinese websites, the search giant’s OS should hit the consumer market as soon as mid-october.

Of course, Google’s ‘no-comment’ policy has dramatically increased the amount of speculation around what could be the actual release date, and makes it very hard to sort facts from rumors.

There is however at least one piece of evidence that tends to support this latest piece of news, which is the fact that Google has been known to be working on Chrome with Freescale, the primary ARM vendor, as well as several Chinese vendors that might well have had a chance to put their hands on an early release of the software.

Either way, the West will still have to wait a few months before the OS reaches the consumer market. Meanwhile, some users have “prepared” for it by building their own version of Chrome OS using SUSE Studio.