Billed as a natural extension of the Google Chrome Browser. They are looking at initially targeting the Netbook phenomenon to place a lightweight operating system on these entry level PC’s. Their planned release is the second half of 2010, about a year away. Their reason for announcing this project now is apparently to help provide momentum from the consumer sector while they are talking to Netbook manufacturers.
Google Chrome OS is supposed to run on both X86 as well as ARM chips. Google’s description of the general architecture is as follows:
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.
Google Chrome OS is not Android and is a totally project from Android. This operating system is being designed ground up for people who spend all their time on the web and want their computers to run as quickly as possible with these web based applications. It will be interesting to see how this project progresses.
Is this operating system for you? On devices that are used 100% of the time for web access then this might be a product that will work for you. However, most of us aren’t so focused on internet only access. Even though I spend 90% of my work day touching the internet in one way or another, 90% of the actual application usage are applications that require more from the computer. Now of course I am on business person but most of us have not shunned the locally run applications from our systems and most likely never do so for everything that we do. This OS may have a place on Netbooks that will be used to acquire and send email, be used as a phone connection to talk to friends, family and business associates, and even interact with web based SAAS products. But, for a daily production system I can’t see it fitting the bill. Sure, I’m just speculating, but it seems like the right conclusion to come to.