Chrome OS: Right Solution at Best Time?
My cheerleading for Google took a turn this week when the new Chrome operating system plan was announced in a blog. Google is press release adverse, preferring to harvest its persona via blogs and sometimes just rumors. However, the blog was pretty rich with data (more than one pundit claims it was also bereft of hard news).
Those who know me also know that I have a storied history with operating system clients. Not long ago I helped found and then run the Embedded Linux Consortium, a trade association developed for the promotion and implementation of Linux for embedded applications. You may not know that for every microprocessor chip sold for desktop, laptop and netbook PCs, 10 more are sold for embedded devices like cell phones, medical instruments, test equipment, fare collection, military and literally thousands of other uses. If a product does not look like a computer but has a computer chip inside, it's an embedded device. My washing machine is an embedded computer.
And every one of those devices needs some kind of operating system. Enter Chrome, which claims the Linux OS as the key "simple" underpinning. Simple? Hardly. Google, you have some struggles ahead. I say that in the nicest possible way based on extensive background with no less than 10 operating systems (one of my early articles compared something approaching 100 embedded OS's in a Control Engineering article).
Linux hasn't earned much traction in the PC business in spite of several good attempts. Oddly, the Chrome browser on which the new OS will be partly based is already built on Linux and open source code yet won't run on Linux. Chrome runs on Windows software - XP and Vista. Wassssup with dat? No homage to the homies?
Of course, Google has the best view of itself from 50,000 feet. It knows how its other offerings like Google Docs delivered through the browser will round out the total OS offering. I won't begin to second guess the high altitude view. But I can wonder just what Google is thinking when the only real competitor here, Microsoft, is gaining ground with the impending distribution of Windows 7 to essentially good reviews in Beta. Even with the disaster that is Vista, Microsoft is not about to fall off the planet. This means that W7 will offer a broad embrace to all those apps you hold near and dear on your hard drive. Apps that you are not ready to give up for browser delivered replacements.
Is there a visible tipping point that we can't see but Google can? Time will tell. In the meantime, I'll hold off on a Netbook purchase to see just what kind of muscle Chrome OS is able to muster. Then the cheerleading might start again (just kidding: I'm pulling for you Googe. I want ala carte cable service and ala carte software.)
