Even though there's been an unofficial deathwatches for the OS for at least 5 years (probably 10), the MSM has picked up the meme now that Google is proudly marching out their new Chrome browser. 
Chrome is a smart play by Google. It's a natural extension of organizing information, which is what Google strives to do. And Chrome is getting raves for it's speediness and neat features like incognito mode.
So, are OSes really obsolete? I've been pondering this question for some time. In a sense, relinquishing our computing entirely to the clouds with a mix of surfing and rich internet applications isn't a technical leap. And for most of us, email-surf-post-IM-streaming are 95% of our activities anyway.
But that's personal computing. What about corporate or power computing? And privacy? There's quite a few situations that benefit greatly from having an OS controlled microprocessor on your desk - you need "oomph" to edit video, photos, play games, and if you're an engineer, to code, run simulations, etc. Let's not even talk about the bandwidth requirements of an all-cloud ecosystem. Yikes.
So sure, there will be a market for thin-clients that connect to the clouds with essentially just a browser on it, but microprocessors and the OSes that sit on them will be here to stay. And while Windows is a horrid OS that the world can do without, efficient, light, or highly vertical OSes (optimized for gaming, multimedia, etc) will likely stick around.
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