Google's Chrome OS To Launch In Fall

Kidfork writes "On Wednesday Google's vice president of product management said that this fall Google will launch Chrome OS to compete with Microsoft Windows. More than 70 million users already use the Chrome Browser, and Google expects at least 1 million users of the OS by day one of release."

Re:Um...

[TheRaven64]

Wasn't it already said that it's illegal to integrate your browser into your operating system?

No, integrating a web browser into an operating system is completely legal. It is illegal, however, to attempt to use an effective monopoly in the desktop operating systems market to gain an effective monopoly in the web browser market.

Google has approximately no market share in the desktop OS market, so this is not an issue. They may have an effective monopoly in the search engine market (debatable), but they are not requiring Chrome or ChromeOS for their search engine so this is also not an issue.

Re:Um...

[minus9]

"Wasn't it already said that it's illegal to integrate your browser into your operating system?"

No it was "said" to be illegal to abuse a monopoly position in one market to take over another. In fact it wasn't just "said", it was and remains the law.

Re:Compete with Windows?!

[somersault]

How do you expect anyone to do any work on Chrome OS? That recent article said that they are using Linux or OSX in place of Windows, not Chrome OS. At this point in time, Chrome OS is only really useful for anything that a browser can do. That is a lot of stuff these days, but there are still some apps that people will need a full OS for - for example proper 3D gaming, creating art/music, or doing pretty much any kind of software development.

Re:What I want

[Joeseph64]

Although it looks like there's a few more steps in this implementation than you'd like, Android has started doing this with Froyo. Here's the Engadget article [engadget.com] that demonstrates pushing links from your desktop onto your Android phone.

Of course, this misses the "without missing a beat" part of your solution, but it's a start.

Re:hmm...

[silentcoder]

>They also must have low IQ's as well... Not much to spend it on? are these people brain dead meat puppets? Motorcycles, Cars, Jetpacks, Overpriced stereos... I can list 90,000 things other than videogames to spend my high-earning money on that is not only
more fun, but get's you way more chicks...

All of which has this in common: they are LEISURE items - why does choosing one leisure item over another define your IQ ?
Also - most high-earning men that age are married, presumably this at least marginally reduces the number of additional chicks they actually NEED to get.

>A sports car is more impressive to a lady than a 6 digit Xbox achievement point number.
To some ladies. Perhaps even a significant majority - but most certainly not for ALL ladies.

>A motorcycle is far more fun than ANY driving game on any gaming platform.
To you. To me. Not to everyone.
Besides, much as I prefer my bike over driving games, I prefer WoW over golf - tastes differ. Why the aggro dude ?

>Racing with your local racing club on a real track is far more fun than any game. $10,000 can get you a nice Miata and all the racing upgrades to really tear it up at the track. a 1.8 with a turbo in a miata makes for real fun on a real track (not a redneck oval)

To you. To some other people. Not to everybody. A helluva lot of people will think THAT is the sign of a low IQ. Choosing to risk your life at high-speed in the real world (where you do NOT respawn).

>Hang gliding is an absolute rush.

Again... to you. I think RAIDING is an actual rush.

I don't fit the profile, I've just turned 30, but I am a high-earning single male without much other financial responsibility. I pay my bond and since I don't have other debt - I got plenty of cash to burn even after making investments. Why the hell should you get to decide that burning it on hanggliding is smarter than burning it on the Cataclysm expansion ?

Talk about having your head so far up your own ass you can't see the crud for the dingleberries...

Re:What I want

[Pegasus]

Just use Opera. It does what you want for some time now.

Re:What I want

[quercus.aeternam]

For firefox, look at the weave plugin.

Re:Google's first flop?

[DragonWriter]

I admire Google's pioneering spirit, and I also welcome any move towards relegating Microsoft to the trashcan of history, but I find it hard to believe that any OS intended for a PC environment that fundamentally requires an always-on internet connection could successfully compete for market share against those that also provide the option of running apps locally.

Chrome OS isn't designed to require an "always on" internet connection, which is why features for offline use of apps are key to it; it requires internet access for online tasks, and for the first logon of a given user.

It is designed to run offline HTML5 web apps locally.

I don't think the world is wired enough yet for the Chrome/Software-as-a-service concept. I also don't think people will just silently accept making regular payments for a service that replaces what they used to be able to do for free locally.

Nothing required to use Chrome requires making regular payments other than the payments already required for having some kind of (at least intermittent) network access.

With Chrome the whole privacy issue is a serious one, and I can also imagine that just the associated network latency of running an app on a remote server instead of locally on a reasonably specced PC is always bound to make the experience feel clunkier.

Google's put a lot of effort (both in the HTML5 standards processes and in the Chrome browser, a key Chrome OS component) to allow "web" apps to do more work locally (including working completely offline.) No doubt, the latency experienced with tradition web apps that do almost all of their work on the server side is precisely the reason for this. This work continues in the runup to Chrome OS (improvements in this area in the Chrome browser are part of what needs to happen before Chrome OS is ready to deploy.)

If Chrome manages to fulfill Google's dream of entirely killing the notion that PCs can run apps locally,

If Chrome OS was intended to do that, it probably wouldn't include as a key component Native Client, whose whole purpose is to enable running native applications locally in a secure sandbox.

Re:Revisionist history with Sundar Pichai

[ildon]

There seems to be a reading comprehension problem on your part here.

The question being posed is: "If I write a new OS now, won't developers have to write all new apps?"
Answer: "No, because we're designing the OS for users of web apps, which do not need to be ported. They'll 'just work' because they're already platform independent."

In the past, before web apps existed or had come into significant use, this was a huge barrier for writing (or, more accurately, marketing) a new OS. e.g. "Why should I switch to Linux if it doesn't run MS Office?" or "Shit, I want to buy an Android phone because AT&T sucks but I can't until someone ports ."

But because this web app framework has already been developed, it is no longer a barrier for a new OS, as long as there is a market for users who only need access to web apps. e.g. "I'm already only using web apps on my netbook, so I can drop the price and a ton of overhead (resulting in a theoretical speed increase) by switching to Chrome OS and not lose any significant functionality that I had before."

Obviously this won't be true for all netbook users, but clearly Google is banking on it applying to a lot of them (or at least enough of them for it to be profitable).