Google Chrome OS – The Future of Computing?
It’s not been very long since Google officially announced the creation of their PC operating sytem – Chrome OS. The naming of the OS is somewhat difficult to wrap my head around because they already have a web browser called Chrome. If they rename it Chrome Browser, maybe that’ll fix it for me, but since they aren’t exactly the same thing, their name should be more clearly delineated. But, that’s not much of an issue right now.
On Thursday, Google officially unveiled the code for Chrome OS to the public. They also served up about an hour of Q&A to get some answers out to the public on how this revolutionary computing concept will work, and what their goals are. For now.
Simply put, Chrome OS is a web browser that works without an operating system. When you turn your computer on, you boot into your browser and that’s all you see. That’s all you see because that’s all there is.
Many people find themselves asking, “Why the hell would I want that?”. My answer to that is, “Because that’s how you spend most of your time anyway.”
Google has clearly stated that (for now), Chrome OS is intended to work on secondary/supplemental computers. It’s not meant to replace your desktop. It’s not meant to replace your workstation at the office. It’s not meant to replace your phone. I recently read an article over at Philoking talking about how he couldn’t totally get behind a machine like this.
For his uses, I guess I can understand that. For me personally, this is EXACTLY what I’m shopping for RIGHT NOW. I have a custom built PC that I use to store all my media, burn DVDs, edit video, and sometimes play games. My wife does all her computing from the couch on her Macbook Pro. She manages photos and video, and sometimes works on scrapbook type projects. What is missing from our household right now is a laptop machine for me that I can surf the web, IM, and watch videos on.
“Isn’t that what a netbook is for?”
Yes, it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, Adobe’s Flash player is such a resource hog, that it’s almost impossible to run Hulu or any other HD content without wanting to throw the netbook against the wall. So, I steal my wife’s MBP when she’s not using it. I was/am hoping that the new Flash Player update (10.1) will fix some of those woes and make a netbook purchase an option for me, but even with all the great deals right now, I can’t even bear to spend $300 without the option to play video, and my budget isn’t much over that.
Now, if you strip away all of the resource requirements of a Windows/Linux/Mac OS, and only have a browser running, all of a sudden, that Intel Atom processor is a beastly machine capable of running some nice HTML 5 embedded video. Without having a chance to yet install the VM of Chrome OS, I can confidently say that this is a product I would definitely be interested in today. Warts and all.
Another thing Google talked about is the security of the OS. From what I understand, you “install” the OS on your machine. When it boots up, it verifies that the “kernel” or whatever brain is running the thing looks exactly like it’s supposed to, and lets you in. If it’s not right, it downloads the OS again, reboots, and reinstalls to the correct version. You don’t lose any data because all of your stuff is saved up on Google’s servers…right where they like it. This prevents what we currently know as malware and probably most viruses as well. That’s not to say that ways to hijack the OS won’t be developed eventually, but for today, it’s a good plan.
On the down side of that, I’m not sure how useful the OS is if you’re not in range of WiFi, a wired connection, or some other form of internet access. If you can’t verify the OS online, can you boot the system up?
Another question I have, that maybe has been answered somewhere, is, does your data cache on that machine in a Windows-type profile? Or do you just log into it, and your data from the cloud is loaded up. For example, if my wife and I each have a Chrome netbook, and we only take one of them on a trip. If I need to log in and check all my stuff, at what point do I log into the machine? At bootup? Do I have the option to log out her active session and log myself in? I suppose I’ll find some of this stuff out when I install it this weekend, but it’s something to consider.
Now that I’ve expressed my general interest in what Google appears to be offering, let’s look at some of the “down the road” implications this may have.
Google is, seriously, taking over the world. They started with search. Then online advertising to generate income. Then gmail. Docs, Talk, Picasa, YouTube, and most recently Android. That in general makes me a little nervous, but they’ve got a looooong way to go before they approach anything Microsoft is doing, but it seems to me they’ve got a good position in that they realize most of what Microsoft (and everyone else) has gotten wrong along the way, and can sail their ship in a different direction to hit the Nirvana of personal computing before anyone else can reposition themselves in the right way. It won’t be 5 years, but in maybe 15 or 20, the entire paradigm of computing could be in for a shift or even complete overhaul.
What Google is offering now seems innocent enough. They are developing their OS for netbooks (to start). These are supplemental PCs that do a few web based things. Most likely, they’ll get it mostly right by converging Gmail, Docs, Picasa, IM, and web apps into a nice little ecosystem. It’ll have a good chunk of your data in the cloud via the plug-in you install on your main PC. You’ll store it on your PC, and share it to your netbook, work computer, and phone. All will be good.
It’s what could happen next that is a mystery, somewhat exciting, and perhaps a little nerve-wracking for everyone else out there trying to get a piece of the computing pie. What happens when the “cloud” based computing initiative really takes off. When Google buys Adobe, and develops their own real music service, and does everything you do on a computer as good as, or possibly better, than everyone else. Heck, maybe not even that good, but because it’ll all be in one place, maybe it’s just easier. What do most people do on their computers right now? Same stuff as I’d do on a netbook, except maybe they manage some music, play a couple of video games, edit some video, and a few other things. So what happens when PCs get even faster, bandwidth gets wider, and we play all our PC games (if there even is such a thing in 10 years) in the browser. Here’s a scenario for you:
I walk up to my PC – Google approved hardware, of course. I power it on and type in my credentials – my gmail address. If they’re smart, they’ll even have some device forensics built into the login process so my login is really secure. Because I’m on WiMax 3.0, bandwidth is no problem. I’ve got a system with Intel’s mid-level 16 core processors running at around 3 gigahertz with 12 GB RAM and a 512 GB Flash based HDD (for local caching only). All that beef for my Chrome OS, which, let’s face it, is a browser. My system flies. So, it takes me about 4 seconds to get booted up, and another 3 to download all of my system preferences and settings. I open up my iTunes web app and start listening to my 90’s mix on shuffle. In another tab, I open Gmail. I open another tab and undock it to have my chat application open. I open a video chat session with my brother. He wants to go do some old school raiding in World of Warcraft, so we’re gonna log in and 2-man The Lich King. I open up a tab and do that. All the while, my PC never skips a beat. Tab/web app opening takes 2-4 seconds per. After we clear Arthas, I tell him I will be afk for 20 minutes and load up a video that I recorded of my son’s little league game. I unload it from my camera, and it locally caches on my PC, but is automatically uploaded to Google’s servers. I make edits to the video in my Adobe Premiere web app and rather than re-sending the whole video file, it sends the incremental changes and uploads the newly compressed video in the background for backup purposes. Or heck, maybe video compression is so good that a 20 minute video file at 1440p is a 400 MB file. A little while later, my wife needs to use the PC, so I put my session in standby, and she logs on. She runs all the things she needs to, but because all of my apps are in the cloud, anything I had running is actually using processor power on someone else’s server, so the fact I have 5 tabs open does not affect her computing experience. Of course, I had the option on whether or not I wanted to go into standby or share system resources with her. While she’s doing her thing, I decide I need to log back on and chat with some people, so I go to my laptop and log in. I am asked how I want to handle my other logged-in session and I instruct it to shut that session down, which it does remotely, and all my open apps/tabs are available to me on my laptop, as though I’d never been on the other machine.
This is just a rough cut-out of what it could be like to have true “cloud computing”. It’d be nice to be able to have your files locally saved as well, so that being online isn’t a requirement, but shadow-copy backups to the cloud would be done all the time. There are already online backup services that do just that.
I’m not sure if this is the direction Google (or anyone else) is truly headed, and it won’t be for everyone, but I can assure you, that if done correctly, this would be the best option for a lot of consumers out there. Now, to just get the bandwidth issues worked out…
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