Google Announces Google Chrome Operating System

[*LTD*]

Seems alright for netbooks and the bottom-end market.

I'm trying to picture this OS five years from now. I'm getting some interesting visions.

The foundation is already there - Google Calendar, Google Docs, Picasa, Gmail, the Chrome browser, and Lord knows how many other apps and services. Google simply wants to package them into a single, accessible entity. revenues might very well come from subscriptions fees for online "Cloud" storage and perhaps some paid services.

The whole operation is entirely feasible, and if realized, will enable some very interesting networking/collaborating possibilities.

You can bet dollars-to-donuts that Apple has known about this for a while and endorses it. It's a clever way of taking chunks out of MS' bottom-end market while not necessarily competing directly with OS X. At some point SJ and Eric Schmidt decided it would be good for Apple's business and Google's to use a Google cloud-OS to rearrange the bottom-end while Apple goes after the high margins of the Premium-end of the market. The only little niggle here is the investigation of the relationship between Schmidt and Apple. I'm not sure what contingency plan, if any, SJ and Schmidt have for that.

 

[convergent]

Bottom line is competition is good. The dominant player for the desktop OS space is Microsoft, and everyone else is a minor player... Apple included. Apple has been making some good inroads over the last couple of years, but still lags far behind. Linux is doing great with servers, but still is an also ran on the desktop. If the collective competition for Microsoft can manage to gain a significant share of the market, then Microsoft will start behaving differently and that is good for everyone.

That said, I don't think that Apple is vulnerable here vs. the other OS players. Apple's model is unique and has worked well. It is the only player that controls the whole product... hw and sw. Google will be dependent on all the different hardware makers to get their product to work, and that will in the end overwhelm them just like its done with Microsoft over the years. Its web oriented approach is also somewhat limited. Do we think that there is going to be a rewrite of Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office to run on this platform? I doubt it. For a netbook, this could be a great thing because Windows is pretty weak there and Apple seems to not be interested in that market.

 

[QCassidy352]

but I'm reluctant to place my data in the hands of such a rapidly expanding company...

Same. I'm trying to extricate myself from google's all-encompassing grasp even now.

To paraphrase a post on this from macworld, though, this is really competition for apple and linux, not MS. Only a small segment of the population is willing to break from the norm, ie Windows. Chrome will further divide that market, not induce (many) more people to abandon MS.

 

[EmperorDarius]

Finally an OS that brings an end to privacy.

 

[Jelite]

Why are people worrying about storage space, computers will still come with hdd/ssd.

 

[DoFoT9]

Why are people worrying about storage space, computers will still come with hdd/ssd.

just trying to narrow down what the "features" will be.

 

[Anuba]

I don't see why everyone thinks Vista is so bad! My main operating system is Vista (Don't have the money for a Mac ), and it is a good OS. I haven't had any problems with crashing, but maybe I am a minority? It was a lot better then my experience with XP on my old computer.

It's not that it's crashing. It's actually more stable than the majority will ever know. Vista's undeserved rep for instability comes from the fact that it introduced a new driver model which is technically far superior to the old one, but many of the rewritten drivers were shaky for a few months after Vista's release. A couple of years and two Service Packs down the line it's every bit as stable as Leopard -- I'd go as far as saying it's more stable. It just runs, while Leopard is still a spinning beachball-infested crash and freeze, random runaway CPU usage fest, in spite of the marketing trying to convince you it's the other way around.

No, the problem with Vista is, it's ludicrously slow. Installing is slow. Booting is slow. Everything lags. It's like watching paint dry. You may not notice it on a desktop computer but on a laptop it really gets on your nerves. I installed it on my brand new MBP 17" 2.8 GHz and it was as slow as it ever was on my old Yonah 2.0 GHz Dell laptop. I gave up and installed the (unsupported) Win7 64-bit release candidate instead, and suddenly everything was blazing fast. The only issue I have with Win7 is that it's still very power hungry. When I'm in Leopard the MBP stays lukewarm. When I'm in Win7 it gets really hot, just doing lightweight stuff like casual surfing, and when I work in Photoshop or scrub the Flash timeline, I can fry eggs on the MBP and the fans go WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I don't see why the Aero desktop engine has to be so poorly optimized even in Win7. CoreGraphics proves that you can utilize the GPU and CPU for flashy UI effects without turning the computer into a furnace.

 

[clevin]

Seems alright for netbooks and the bottom-end market.

I dont think you have correct impression of a netbook. other than lacking of a CD/DVD drive, its capable of everything a notebook can, albeit with slower performance in CPU intensive works such as office 2007, illustrator, or photoshop, or any modern games.

It's wrong to assume a netbook can only do limited things, It actually can do most of the things a notebook can. That already means numerous.

some games
web
office
torrent
movie
hulu
IM
DVD ripping (with external DVD drive)
video transcoding
skyp video chatting
image manipulating such as gimp, photoshop, illustrator
heck, even programming is doable on a netbook. Its an 1.6Ghz CPU with a windows anyway, people do programming when they were using a 266MHz CPU.

Finally an OS that brings an end to privacy.

HAHA, exactly, altho I hope not.

 

[djellison]

You may not notice it on a desktop computer but on a laptop it really gets on your nerves

I've tried it on a £400 Dell laptop. It was great.

As for fans kicking off with casual surfing....watch your MB/MBP temps after watching a bit of youtube. It's pathetic.

 

[clevin]

I've tried it on a £400 Dell laptop. It was great.

As for fans kicking off with casual surfing....watch your MB/MBP temps after watching a bit of youtube. It's pathetic.

its a sad fact that netbook's flash video performance is actually better than a modern MB. Hulu, CBS video, etc.

Its really pathetic. Adobe and apple needs to figure this out, one way or another.

 

[SPUY767]

A new operating system based on a browser? Isn't that a little like building a new car based on a bucket seat?

It worked for microsoft.

 

[bretm]

Any one else see Apples server farm as a related move by Apple? I mean we're all wondering what Apple is planning in the netbook/tablet market AND now we wonder what the server farm is for. With the IPhone they've already got the start on a lightweight unix operating system for devices. Makes you wonder what Apple has up it's sleeve.

 

[*LTD*]

Finally an OS that brings an end to privacy.

If you're a consumer in the present day, you don't really have any to begin with beyond what is protected by agreements you have with vendors/creditors. And that's more or less out of your full control after a point.

Apple has my credit card #, including a number of other organizations. A lot of my info is arleady on the "Cloud" - but the convenience there is all the sync-based services.

When you live in a society that functions and depends so heavily on credit, and not even that, on centralizing information, this is what you get.

My creditors have nearly all my personal info - it's all on your credit bureau, anyway, which gets updated regularly, containing info about previous addresses, driver's license info and everything attached to that, all your employers - current and previous and their addresses, nearly every detail of your finances, all major purchases, and it may include other little tidbits of info about you (and WILL) in the event you default on your creditors, or are even a bit late with payments. Creditors often attach information to credit bureaus when submitted to third parties for collections/verification purposes. I.e., "has son named Joe in Pleasantville - try family in Shady Springs, former business partner is "Henry Jones", company name is ABC Whatever."

As an accounts recovery officer (was in the industry for 10 years), I can immediately gather information about you, both public and personal using not only industry-specific tools, but common internet toold and services, and cross-reference them. I can find you, your family, see who your friends are, who your neighbours are, etc. And if you have a slightly less-common last name and don't live in a major city, it is perfectly legal for me to call every listing with your last name in order to track you down, for example.

I can set up a fake Facebook account and track you down, get you to respond to me with some general info, which I can then use to either confirm who you are and/or get closer to tracking you down. And what I'm doing is perfectly legal. We did it all the time and it worked like a charm. Our clients loved us.

As long as your personal info is not used for illegal purposes (you have safeguards and mechanisms in place to prevent and remedy that), you might as well rest easy and worry about more important things like your health and your diet.

 

[Anuba]

I've tried it on a £400 Dell laptop. It was great.

As for fans kicking off with casual surfing....watch your MB/MBP temps after watching a bit of youtube. It's pathetic.

Well yeah, but that's the Flash plugin for you (YouTube is Flash based). Flash is the #1 source for crashes on both MacOS and Windows and the optimization blows. Leave it to Adobe to make a brand new quad-core computer sweat just from animating some crude vector graphics. If you though Microsoft was the mother of all bloated, overpriced, slow and poorly written software, you haven't seen Adobe CS4.

I only know of two things that can set off the fans in Leopard... 1) long encoding passes in iTunes, 2) Flash (YouTube certainly does it, but even a couple of tiny Flash banners can do the trick).

 

[kdarling]

Interesting, since Microsoft was just talking about their Gazelle project, which sounds very similar...

I haven't read too deeply, but Gazelle is also a browser-based OS, that sits on top of your original OS.

 

[*LTD*]

Looks like all the big names are moving in this direction:

Apple's server farm

Microsoft's Gazelle

Google's OS

This news about google doesn't seem like much of a shocker in light of the wider context.

 

[SPUY767]

PC makers, it seems to me, have been hurt enormously in the last few years because of their past willingness to fight for the low-end market to such an extent that they undercut the perceived value of their product. I don't think any of them are looking to continue that direction. I don't think this is going to be as easy for Google as some of you do.

Apple appears to be one of the only companies who understand this principle of business. I see it everywhere. Everyone trying to be the cheapest of something instead of building value in their product. Microsoft appears to have some half-hearted mentally-challenged attempt at this by simple pricing their OS astronomically if it isn't bought Pre-Installed, but as yet Apple is the only company to have mastered the concept of a high value product. Fight for the scraps long enough, and eventually that's exactly what you'll get.

 

[Kinjjibo]

Ugh. I heard about this a while ago. A Google OS would be horrible. That'd mean most definently only Google software and no Microsoft/Mac applications could be used. Which would leave limited software. I'm only saying this because it's a challenge to Microsoft. I may be wrong about only Google apps(probably wrong).

 

[Ibjr]

Great. Another minority OS that will completely fail to capture the market.

Google: you do search, photo management, maps and mail. You're good at these things. Everything else you do sucks and this will be no exception.

I'm glad you've cleared that up. Now replace "google" with Mac, "maps" with "drawing" and "mail" with "design" and you have what people said about Apple 5 years ago.

 

[Anuba]

Looks like all the big names are moving in this direction:

Apple's server farm

Microsoft's Gazelle

Google's OS

This news about google doesn't seem like much of a shocker in light of the wider context.

Sigh... I don't WANT a web-based OS, I don't WANT all my files in the cloud. If they blow all their development resources on this crap, it'll be the biggest display of misguided investment since the dot-com bubble.

 

[Ibjr]

It worked for microsoft.

Explain/ No MS OS was ever based on a browser. That is why you will be able to buy IE less windows 7.

 

[SPUY767]

Apple OS is used by people for its heavyweight rich gui based apps. This lightweight simple os can be targetted for naive users, who use internet for email, general browsing etc

Your comment made me think: Google Chrome OS = WebTV.

 

[milani]

Google does a lot of things right. Tasteful GUIs are not one of them. I can't even begin to imagine how ugly a Chrome-style operating system would look.

Side note, I don't understand the appeal of these browser-based applications... at all.

 

[*LTD*]

It worked for microsoft.

And ended up killing Windows.

 

[Ibjr]

Ugh. I heard about this a while ago. A Google OS would be horrible. That'd mean most definently only Google software and no Microsoft/Mac applications could be used. Which would leave limited software. I'm only saying this because it's a challenge to Microsoft. I may be wrong about only Google apps(probably wrong).

You're wrong about Google Apps of course... It will run anything web based (ajax) program. And no, you didn't "hear" about this awhile ago. You have have heard speculation, but no confirmation. The only announced google os where their clustering server.

And Google OS isn't designed to replace OSX and Windows for complicated tasks, just for basic tasks that most everyone uses their computer for.