Google Chrome OS – Coming Soon!!!

Do you think that Google Chrome OS will take out Windows? The odds are pretty unlikely, but it sure would be a David and Goliath style smackdown.

Google announced yesterday that they are releasing their new operating system Google Chrome OS. This is actually very exciting for me. I think Google has a really good opportunity to show the world the amount of power they actually have in the technology market, plus, Google will release this new OS as an Open Source project, so it will most likely be free.

Why would Google Make an Operating System?

As far as I know, Google has been discussing an OS for quite some time now. They released the mobile OS Android and they have been dabbling in this side of computing for a couple years. I assume that since Google understands how the information age is changing the way people compute, that they should develop an operating system that will do what they need it to do, only faster and more securely than Windows based OS.

From the Google Blog:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

I personally believe that Google’s plan is to take more marketshare away from Microsoft, and the best way to do it is to develop a competing OS. Microsoft recently introduced Bing, and that was a very unexpected blow to Google. Microsoft has been promoting Bing non-stop since it launched, and now, Windows Internet Explorer is using Bing as their default search engine. Plus, with netbooks gaining popularity, and Windows being far too bloated for netbooks, Google may have a surefire bet here.

From the Google Blog:

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform

So, as you can see, they are going to use the Linux Kernel as the framework, so that should help out with finding device drivers, etc.. I just hope that they make a GUI that makes sense to newbie users. The one frustration that most people have with Linux based OSs, is that the whole command prompt thing gets old quick. It would be great if the made the entire OS a drag/drop style interface with some of the flare of, say, the Iphone OS, or something that would make for an EASY experience for the end-users.

If there is ANY company that understands what their end-users want, it’s Google. So this should be a really exciting project that I will follow closely, and keep you all posted.

Thanks again for reading my blog!