Amit Midha, Dell’s president for Greater China and South Asia said:

“We have to have a point of view on the industry and technology direction two years, three years down the road, so we continuously work with Google on this. There are going to be unique innovations coming up in the marketplace in two, three years, with a new form of computing, we want to be on that forefront … So with Chrome or Android or anything like that we want to be one of the leaders.”

Midha added that talks were underway between the two companies.

While Midha isn’t committing Dell to anything specific, it is a blow to Microsoft (MSFT) that negotiations to replace Windows 7 in future netbooks are underway at all.  Google doesn’t charge companies to use its ChromeOS.  Microsoft, of course, charges a significant licensing fee for Windows.

Dell is the third-largest customer of Windows licenses globally, behind Acer and HP (HP), both of whom were also spotted hanging around in development builds of ChromeOS last week.  The first ChromeOS computers are slated to start shipping during late fall of this year.

Chrome will only run applications that are built for the web, including those designed for Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, though Chrome will have access to some legacy desktop applications through a process called Chromoting.