The news comes to us from Download Squad, which bases its story on an anonymous source.It says that a Google branded, Chrome OS toting slate device could be launched as soon as Black Friday, that is Nov 26 2010.

Download Squad says HTC will manufacture the device, and Google will offer it in collaboration with Verizon. On the hardware side of things, the Google slate could be relatively well-endowed:

It’ll likely be based on NVidia’s Tegra 2 platform and sport a 1280×720 multitouch display, 2GB of RAM, minimum 32GB SSD, WiFi/Bluetooth/3G connectivity, GPS, webcam, and possibly expandable storage via a multi-card reader. Expect it to be every bit as geek-tastic as the Nexus One — Google won’t want to disappoint its early adopters.

Evidence definitely points to Chrome OS hitting the streets this fall. The folks at 1UP broke the news on Monday that the Chrome Web Store is “set to launch this October.” From what I can tell, the service will have much in common with the Android Market and iTunes App Store, just with web applications instead of native software.

Thanks to the UI concepts Google posted on the Chromium Projects site a while back, we have an idea of what the rumored Chrome OS slate could look like: a big, iPad-like contraption with a web browser for a home screen. Of course, if the price is right—and it could be, if Verizon subsidizes the thing—this might just turn out to be the perfect device to pitch against the Apple iPad.