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Google has been making some pretty cool announcements these past years. First it came up with AppEngine, then Android, and now the almighty ChromeOS. In this first mini part series, I'm going to be giving my two cents on ChromeOS and what it means for developers, end-users, and Google itself. To give you a clear view of my opinions, other then the Official Google Blog, i have not read or participated in any of the other discussion on ChromeOS.
For those who have been living under a rock, ChromeOS is Google's brand spanking soon to be release OS that is going for the netbook market. According to Google
"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.".
What does this exactly mean for the end user? Well, from what I can make out ChromeOS will feature Google Apps as its core apps installed on the system. When I say installed, I mean that these applications will run in offline mode in the ChromeOS environment which can be seen as a browser from what I can make out of the press release.
This makes complete sense in terms of netbooks, as this will be a lightweight alternative to heavy weight programs such as outlook, word, calendar etc. It will save battery life by a lot, and because of Google Gears being popular, this will start to support many applications in "offline mode".
Now that we have a complete lightweight office suite and vast amounts of applications running Google Gears, we come up to our next question which is 'Will ChromeOS have Flash Support?", and the answer for that I feel is a yes. Flash Player is coming out for the Android this october and I am 99.9% sure that google is working away at ChromeOS support. Instantly ChromeOS will have support for the rich internet applications being made in Flex/Flash for the Fash Platform.
However, I feel that ChromeOS is just using the linux kernel and the rest is Googles own "Chrome Engine" running on top, which means that this will break support for applications designed to run in Gnome,KDE, X11,(I am no linux developer so I may be wrong here).
All in all, I feel Google may have a winner in the netbook market, but as for the Desktop market and "Windows/Mac Killer" that is out of the question. ChromeOS is not designed to compete with Windows or Mac. You are just not going to get i.e PhotoShop running on ChromeOS, however for the netbook market this will be a godsend. Now you guys know why Google was quiet when developers wanted to put Android on netbooks. It was never meant for it, Google had the Chrome card up there sleeves all along.
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I think google should just stick to what its good at. Chrome OS will just be dipping into the linux marketshare. There will never be a OS big enough to take on Microsoft.
Well, if chrome OS won't get Photoshop, will we get the GIMP? I'm wondering what subset of Linux/GNU programs will run on the environment. Will we be able to compile our own code on the platform? Will we be able to compile the kernel (hence will it be complete open source)? I guess my key question is: what linux applications won't run on Chrome OS (probably GNOME/KDE apps, but X11 apps?).
Actually, the Photoshop remark is not quite true.
True, I don't see it likely to have full Photoshop, or Creative Suite access on the Chrome OS. BUT, Adobe has been steadily moving all of their products to web-based services. Already there is Photoshop and Premiere Express, which run completely offline. It would be easy to take that online application and give it the ability to run offline, and therefore in Chrome.
My wife has a netbook. It's running windows but you would never know it. Chrome is launched at startup and that's the only thing that ever runs. Music (Pandora), Email (GMail) Calander (Google again) and then just regular browsing all comes through the browser. Getting rid of as much of the underlying OS as possible just makes sense to me.
If you WANT to carry around a computer that runs Photoshop then get a PC or a Mac laptop. You shouldn't be running that kind of app of a netbook anyway. It would just frustrate you.
Windows 7 running great on Netbooks and is great OS from Microsoft. Google ChromeOS is just another marketing trick to put eyes from Bing threat.
How exactly is Bing a threat to Google? Bing isn't a threat to Yahoo for that matter. The only reason Bing is getting hits is because of media hype, and it won't last. I mean come on, did you actually used Bing and found it useful? Bing is a marketing trick, they're just trying to stay afloat with their increasingly outdated software.
ChromeOS will find it's way into the market, but it won't pose a threat to Win7. Win7 will never run satisfactory on netbooks, and netbooks are meant to be low power notebooks, not a replacement for them. Running a netbook with Win7 is like mounting a natural gas system on a Ferrari.
I think that Microsoft has a lot to worry about. The idea of desktop dedicated to surf on the internet has been around for a while with the cybercafes ...
... is just that now it is maturing ...
the fact is that today everytime one starts using a OS there is 09.9999 probability of going online ... and probability of 1 that the person is thinking ."... I need to be online...". mobile phones are the best example.
so ... now is the time ... Deskop OS are dinosaurios .... and what happened to them ...? well I dont actually know ... but the best way to see them is on museum.
a situation i'm seeing more frequently now is ms-windows users being more frequently blamed like 'why are you still using this, when there are so obvious better choices out there' than used to be years ago - and as far ms-windows see the facts, they become migrating to Linux, MacOS-X or both - all people will realize the only reason to run ms-WIndows is for testing patience with virus issues, anti-virus efficiency lack and performance affecting the operating system, etc. - '10s will be not a decate for Microsoft if they want to keep their business model, for sure.
I think google should just stick to what its good at. Chrome OS will just be dipping into the linux marketshare. There will never be a OS big enough to take on Microsoft.
OS X.
derp
99% of Google's revenue comes from it's ads/search engine. Everything else is 1% so most things aren't making real money. But Google know that every time they announce something (mostly useless) their stocks go up. It's hype and ChromeOS falls in that category.
Hey Faisal Abid,
good one!!! you know your stuff my friend very alot lol