GOOGLE ANNOUNCES GOOGLE CHROME OPERATING SYSTEM
JULY 8, 2009
I wasn’t sure when, or how, but it looks like the words I wrote 3 1/2 years ago are ringing true today. Google announces that they will be producing an operating system. They are calling it Google Chrome OS.
According their the blog post, It’s a browser-based operating system built on top of a Linux kernal. It will be different than their mobile OS, Android, but will probably have some overlapping technologies. The initial target machine is a netbook, but Google says that it will be powerful enough to power your desktop workstation.
Does this spell the end of Microsoft and Apple? No way. But it definitely changes the game. Google is a late-comer to the operating system game and Microsoft and Apple have made significant investments in their technology (some with more success than others. *cough* Vista.). Apple and Microsoft will have to respond somehow to this move by Google. Will we see web-based operating systems from either Apple or Microsoft? Or will they dismiss this as irrelevant? Apple has repeatedly shied away from the netbook market. Seems to me this could force their hand.
One thing that I can’t get around is how is a web-based operating system, where every application lives “in the cloud”, will be able to handle resource intensive applications. It seems like this coincides with the broad movement to JavaScript based frameworks like Cappuccino. The combination of a framework like Cappuccino and a web-based OS will definitely give users a new and different experience. Time will only tell if it will be a rich enough experience to eliminate the machine-specific OS.
