Cloud.
In their constant (and winning) battle to be the leading ambassadors and evangelists of cloud computing, Google upped the stakes yesterday with their announcement of Chrome OS.
Chrome OS is a very lightweight operating system designed specifically for netbooks and other such devices, and basically consists of nothing but a browser (a variant on Google’s own Chrome browser), with all applications and data storage moved to the cloud. This makes the OS extremely lightweight, and a machine running Chrome OS will boot from cold in 5-7 seconds. Google has specified a specific hardware platform for it too - it will only run on machines with solid-state hard drives, and with certain specific display hardware, in order to optimise the experience. Since the OS allows no other installed apps other than the browser, right now you would be somewhat limited with what you could do with a machine running Chrome - there’s currently nothing online that can replicate the functionality of Photoshop, for instance (Adobe’s Photoshop Online doesn’t really count, since it only offers a fraction of the functionality of even their most basic desktop offering, Photoshop Elements). But, for many users out there, all they will want to do is browse the web, check their e-mail and occasionally edit a document in Google Docs, so, for them, it will probably be more than adequate.
Google’s strategy is apparent - they want to encourage developers to create online equivalents to popular applications, eventually offering all the functionality of common desktop apps. They have the right browser for it - Chrome (the browser) is, by far, the fastest current-generation web browser, capable of running web apps significantly quicker than the competition. It also fully supports the latest web standards (HTML 5 and CSS 3) that Google is hoping developers will adopt and use to make the experience of using a website to do your work slicker and closer to the desktop experience. Already, Google’s own cloud apps (Google Docs, Picasa, Gmail, Google Maps and the forthcoming Wave) have made inroads into the enterprise market, and with greater adoption of the Chrome OS, this will only grow.
Google’s ambitions for Chrome OS are impressive, but it relies on one aspect that is central to its existence - you will need internet connectivity to do anything with it at all. Now, great strides have been made with so-called “ubiquitous” internet access, with widely available public wi-fi, 3G modems and so on, but by no means is it even close to being “ubiquitous”. There are many areas where 3G connectivity is not available (especially outside places such as North America and Western Europe), and, while “wardrivers” can usually scout out an area and find an unencrypted wi-fi connection to abuse, your average user won’t have the slightest idea how to do that. Also, what about people who travel a lot? Travellers are part of the core market for netbooks, and users may want to work or be entertained while on a plane or bus. You can’t access YouTube or Pandora without an internet connection, since, without the facility to store audio or video locally on the machine, that’s all you’d have available.
What we have here is something essentially from computing history - a thin client, also known as a “dumb terminal”. Back in the day, computer “terminals” did nothing except provide a way to access the computing power and storage of a big mainframe somewhere else. This is a modern, internet-connected version of the same thing, and will enable hardware manufacturers to make lightweight, cheap and simple computers geared to nothing except internet access. Finally, a netbook running Chrome OS might be the computer your grandparents have been waiting for - a safe, secure browser, no spyware or viruses to worry about, and an idiot-proof user interface that is virtually self-maintaining. The day will come when we will all have ubiquitous internet connectivity, and I applaud Google for pushing technology in this direction, since it’s basically inevitable that eventually everything will be in the cloud. I just don’t think the world’s quite ready for it yet. But, when it is, Google will be waiting.
Google have been able to shape the internet in their image, thanks to their sheer pervasiveness, who’s to say they won’t do the same with Chrome OS?
