I’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings related to Google’s Chrome OS, but I really didn’t understand what all the hub-bub was about. I figured it was a minimal sort of software OS, but beyond that I really didn’t know much more and hadn’t seen anything to offer clues.
Here’s the first article I’ve seen giving a reasonable high-level view of Chrome. The idea is really simple- the browser becomes the UI.
Google has also made a lot of other decisions. For instance, there is no hard drive, therefore no local storage. All storage is online. This takes away most, if not all, of the customizations associated with computers. All computing is accomplished via cloud computing- funny how computing is going back to its roots as essentially dumb terminals hooked up to a mainframe. Obviously, there isn’t a mainframe involved here- rather some server and the terminals are a smidge brighter than “dumb terminals.” But not by much.
The article also mentions current problems with Chrome applications. More specifically that more are needed. Though if Chrome catches on in any kind of way, I expect that problem will take care of itself.
There’s currently no pricing info available. With the reduced hardware requirements, I expect it will be cheap- at least netbook cheap. Chrome could push entry level computing below the threshold the current crop of netbooks has established. Especially with the likes of Acer involved. I’d expect to see it in tablet computers as well, possibly even higher end cell phones though at this point no touch-interface UI functions are available.
Based on this reading, Chrome isn’t something that I’d be interested in. I like being able to make the computer do what I want it to do. In my world view, computers are supposed to be flexible. Chrome to offers flexibility on it’s own terms. But apparently that’s considered a feature, not a bug. Google might be right- I’m under no illusion that I’m representative of the computing population. It will be interesting to see if it catches on.