Google Chrome OS
A not so surprising, and maybe even expected by some people, news or rather blog entry was published yesterday, 7th July 2009, by Google on their blogspot page. This entry describes plans of Google to raise their Google Chrome browser to the next level, Google Chrome Operating System. For many Google users it was obvious, or at least expectable, that Google will sooner or later break into the Operating System business too, coupled with all their online apps they already have. If this however is surprising news for you, then you probably should wake up and open your eyes too.
Google indicates that the Chrome OS will be designed with a new windowing system, based on the Linux Kernel and run on x86 and ARM chips. It will also be open sourced towards the end of the year, inviting the open source community to participate.
Chrome OS is a different project than Android, they can and probably will overlap each other, but as Google states “[...], we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.”.
In their blog Google pokes at MS with statements that users want to have their online applications available immediately and not wait for their machine to boot up and wasting a long time until also the browser is up finally, next to saying that people want their machines to be as fast as on the day they purchased it. Further they state Chrome OS will be designed it in a way that virii, malware etc. won’t have a chance either.
This move is probably to be regarded as part of their vision, having everyone and everything online and connected. I personally am not a fan of having all data online on their ‘cloud’, as it’s nowadays called in new-fashion lingo, instead keeping data on my own machine. Imagine another downtime of Google Services, when you have to really depend on their services.
It will however be interesting to watch how Google Chrome OS will pick up, especially also Microsoft’s reaction.
Here is their Blogspot entry
Heh.. as I said before this sounds pretty much like making Chrome the root window on X >:) used to do that with firefox when I could not be arsed loading a window manager and just wanted to show a full screen web app.