Google announces OS! (Cloud computing gains an extra foothold)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009After hearing murmurs in the rumor mill for quite a while, Google has finally confirmed the speculations…. they are releasing an operating system. The Google Chrome OS, which is centered around the Chrome web browser, is initially targeted at netbooks. Given the fact that netbooks are primarily companion devices and their primary usage pattern is web-surfing, the move to target netbooks to begin with and make the OS revolve around Chrome is smart. It’ll allow Google to beta test their OS on a relatively limited number of non-critical PCs and gather feedback from the userbase to tweak the OS in preparation for a larger assault on the computing world.
While details are relatively sparse, the following statement from the announcement hints at a full-on foray into the cloud computing space
“They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”
Personally, I think that the announcement of the Google Chrome OS is a welcome bit of news. The operating systems that are currently preloaded on netbooks are either dated or unintuitive and this highly legitimate competitor to the incumbents will help to force improvements, making customers the winners. In a previous article on Roaring Mouse, I argued that cloud computing and a move to an all-Internet based software environment for most business software is imminent. I believe that this announcement is a major step toward making that claim a reality. What do you think of it all?
