Google’s big news for the month is that they’re now hard at work on their own operating system, Google Chrome OS. They’re also getting better at explaining these releases quickly, and so in that spirit here’s the What is Google Chrome OS? video:
Also useful is this concept video of Chrome OS (keeping in mind a concept video means this isn’t ready yet!):
And if you ACTUALLY like really long product announcements, you can find the 80-minute Chrome OS launch here. For me, the most exciting thing about this OS is the speed – skipping most of the traditional aspects of desktop operating systems means this will be amazingly quick and, as the developers right note, a lot of people want to know one thing: how long until I can get onto the web?
The initial report on Chrome OS from the BBC quite sensibly points out that this could be a very direct challenge to Microsoft, but the New York Times points to the key difference with current desktop OSes, it’s all about working and storing in the cloud:
But with the Chrome operating system, Google is not trying to build a better version of Windows. Instead, it is aiming to shift users toward its vision of “cloud computing,” a model in which programs are not installed on a PC but rather are used over the Internet and accessed through a Web browser. In Google’s approach, a user’s data will also reside on servers across the Internet, rather than on their PC.
Meanwhile, Steve Rubel suggests Chrome OS is redundant since pretty much everyone will see their phones as their primary non-desktop device, but he doesn’t seem to comment on the important facet that Chrome OS will have everyone using it thinking about desktop computing and mobile computing in exactly the same way! It’s far from ready today, the great thing is that Chrome OS is open source, so you can go and see what’s happening and, if you’re so inclined, go tinker with it. Google have set the official release target as a year from now; if Chrome OS can do everything promised by then, they’re definitely going to give Microsoft something to worry about!
