Google announces new operating system
It looks like the Internet appliance that I have been saying we need may be arriving. Google has just announced its Chrome operating system that is a stripped-down OS geared to using the Chrome browser and providing just Internet services. The blogs are all breathless and bubbling with talk about competition with Windows but that’s premature, in my opinion. Certainly a Chrome OS would compete on small platforms and on netbooks but so far Google is only talking about an OS specifically aimed at Internet use. There is no direct competition for the all-purpose Windows and its many applications yet. Of course, that may be down the road. Web based applications may be part of the Google plan. One of the more reasonable assessments is from AnandTech:
Rather than rattle off the entire contents of their announcement, let’s hit the high points. Google’s Chrome OS is an OS designed to do one thing and one thing only: run Google Chrome. It will be open source, it will run on ARM and x86, it’s Linux based, and it’s not going to launch until the second half of 2010. Taking a page out of Apple’s book, Google is announcing it now as a way to avoid another party spill the beans before Google is ready.
The single most important thing to take from this announcement right now is just what Chrome OS will do. It won’t run an email client, it won’t run an office suite, and it won’t run games – it will only run Google Chrome. It’s Linux stripped to the bone, left with just enough to run Chrome, and nothing more.
Given this kind of a design, it should come as little surprise then that Chrome itself will be the platform through which additional applications will run. Google has been pushing the web application idea for years – indeed Chrome exists to further drive that goal – but previously this has always required accessing said web applications through a web browser running on a full-fledged OS. If nothing else it is somewhat redundant, not to mention the existence and use of native applications goes against Google’s grand unified vision for everything to be a web application.
Because Chrome will be available on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, developers will be able to create web applications targeting Chrome, and have it run on computers running any of the above operating systems, along with netbooks running Chrome OS. Along these lines, Google’s own web application suite finally left beta this week, where it’s entirely possible that this was intentional to coincide with the announcement of Chrome OS. Regardless, clearly Google’s application suite is going to be the center point of Chrome OS in order to flesh out the capabilities of Chrome OS-equipped netbooks to what’s expected of a modern computer.
All in all, I think this is a great development for the consumer and home PC users in particular. Competition for Microsoft has been sorely needed. Anand says:
And last but not least, we have Microsoft. The web browser replacing the OS has been Microsoft’s worst nightmare for well over a decade now. Much of their late-90’s anti-trust trial focused on how they attempted to drive Netscape out of business for fear of this exact situation arising. Microsoft won’t sit by idle, they will undoubtedly make a big move against Chrome OS, and they will try to not get dragged back in to court in the process. Whether that means just more cheap copies of Windows for netbooks or something more remains to be seen.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Mike Elgan has written an interesting article on why the Google Chrome OS will not hurt the Windows and Mac OS operating systems.
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/features/article.php/3828841/10-Reasons-Why-Chrome-OS-Is-No-Windows-Killer.htm