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Google announces Chrome OS
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 8th July 2009
Google's Chrome OS will apparently be ready for use on most netbooks by the second half of next year.
Unveiled on the official Google blog, Chrome OS will be a completely open-source operating system that's being very much crafted as a lightweight OS capable of running on almost any system.
"Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds," says the Google blog.
"The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."
"Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. 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."
The Google team were also keen to draw a divide between Chrome OS and Android systems, saying that while Android was designed to only run on mobile devices for the most part, Chrome OS should work on any system and is targeted at those who spend most of their time on the internet.
Excited by the idea of a Google operating system, or will you stick with Windows for the games? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Just surprised it's taken this long to announce it, and yay for Gmail being finally out of beta.
No gaming capability, no point installing an OS.
:(
Chrome OS will be a light weight OS for low powered devices, so you won't be gaming on them anyway, hopefully we may see a beta or even an RC before long.
Sam
How?
It is just another distro in the unix / linux world...
I heavily doubt it will get anything beyond 0.001% marketshare outside of mobilephones, pdas and netbooks.
I wouldn't be so sure- I imagine google will use some pretty heavy marketing on their site to push it. Plus alot of people will be more happy using a distro by Google rather than anyone else because of the confidence in the technical capabilities of the company that people have.
Surely it can only help to have another player in the game?
Hehe, nice one :D
My laptop is shocking. I might give it a try. Dual Booting.
just my thought, this is proberly the best news in the OS market for a loong time, for once giving MS a direct competitor wiht both the brand, means and the know how to do so (not to say the cojones)
This may end up very interesting
Ooh... it's not like there aren't low-footprint simple distros out there already. DamnSmallLinux or Puppy Linux anyone?
I am underwhelmed.
And pr0n. All your data belongs to Google.
Isn't Apple OS essentially *nix with a fancy skin?
i believe that's how it's meant to be written.
a OS that require constant internet connection just to get personal files? no thanks. internet isn't everything, i remember back in the days when each student had to carry around a floppy drive with their files on it.
Correct me if I'm wrong but no Linux developers have anywhere near the clout that Google has.
That is without a doubt the most idiotic things I have heard so far. They are not going to make you store your data in the cloud and they would have no reason to want you to.
Chrome OS is a very good thing, at last a company with the money, time & balls to hit Microsoft in there home territory. Google wouldn't be making this move if they didn't already know they were onto a winner. People making assumption's about what it is going to be made out of or what it's going to be capable of are morons since nobody outside of the chocolate factory has any clue and probably won't for some time.
Yes.
Although it's BSD based if I remember correctly, rather than linux.
I don't see how in the world you expect Chrome OS to challenge Windows considering a VERY large portion of Windows-based machines are in the workspace.
Chrome OS is targeted at netbooks, hardly what you'd use for anything more than entertainment and browsing the web, etc.
Granted, we don't even have any details as to how it'll work, what it'll do, what will come with it, etc, so don't put the cart before the horse as the saying goes.
It'll also give you the choice to make it the Yahoo OS, Lycos OS, or Bling OS because otherwise it'd be anti-competitive if it was only usable with Google services
OpenOffice is great and free, but the greater public just don't trust anything that the rest of the sheeps don't use. Google is so synonymous with the desktop of any OS that it is familiar and trusted by said sheep. If google apps is pre-installed ready then a basic office suite (instead of MS crappy works) is available. If OpenOffice could be bundled and endorsed by Google then uptake may be better.
Google gears allows you docs to be synced up between local storage and the cloud, plus allows you to work seemlessly on and offline (anyone with a t-mobile USB modem should try it. Dropping the connection every two minutes is a great test!). This means the argument of 'O noes, my doxumints has been hiddenz from mi ize wiv net lost!' or rather 'no connection=no documents'.
Finally, yes no doubt Google will get data of some sort from your machine. How the hell do you think they make money? But, really, how interested do you think they are in who sits at the machine they have the data from? So what if you like to go to 'over forties milking matrons.com' of an evening, or have schematics for the next big thing to sell at christmas? They are not, ever, going to go and point a finger at you and laugh, or tell your mum.
Also, can you imagine the fallout if they kept tabs on personal info? No, not pretty and I don't think they are that stupid. Enjoy google, revel in the free stuff (Except Google Desktop, that's crap) and use AdBlocker :-)
I would look for Google to not stop at just this slimline OS but to actually leverage the kernel they use to bring to market a more full featured OS which realistically could happen within a couple years of GA for the Chrome OS mentioned in this article.
Imagine the possibilities...an OS designed from the ground up to be simple, efficient, and fully extensible with a corporation large enough to support its evolution into the second major OS on the market. I mean come on...if you could have a gaming PC running on a non-microsoft OS which comes pre-bundled with all the basics you need to do business tasks as well as having an emulated windows environment which is efficient enough to run games designed for windows.
This could be right around the corner if google plays its hand properly and doesn't rush the Chrome OS to market. With the negative publicity microsoft received from the vista OS IMHO google has made this announcement at the right time. How nice would it be to have Windows 7 go RTM and shortly there after have a google OS released that would shift netbook users, which is a market sector which is growing rapidly, to a non-microsoft OS and start people thinking about features and functionality they want instead of having an OS which contains so much bloat that it is a resource hog on any machine.
Not saying that the Chrome OS will be the best thing since sliced bread but it will be nice to see if Google has what it takes to shake up the microsoft monopolized business and home OS market.
Yes, but even with 20 or so years of spending millions on marketing it got how much market share? somewhere in the single digit area.
So if apple can't buy the way to success, then why should google be able to?
Some of us can scarcely get a decent dsl connection, never mind actually compute entirely online.
Chrome OS will basically be Chrome running on a Linux kernel. Every application will have to run in Chrome [WEB application]. Right?
Personal/local data will be stored LOCALLY with the OPTION to sync with the Cloud.
So, to me at least, that means we won't be able to install FF or OO or anything. Well, I quite like Chrome, though I use FF as my main browser because of the infinite possibilities through add-ons. I'll give it a try once they release the Beta/RC/RTM and I might give the retail version a go if a) the earlier versions were good enough and b) it's free [that's pretty much a given, seeing it's open source].
Now please stop whining about how you're not going to be able to access your data w/o the internet because of big-bad-Google, hmkay?
Thanks.
Yah, sept for the bit about where Chrome is running on its own windowing system, implying that Chrome (the browser) will not necessarily be the only thing that runs on Chrome (the OS). And even if I'm talking bull, the software is open-sourced, so SOMEone will make it run MAME (the only truly useful piece of software for a netbook) or whatever, eventually.
PS - what happens when you get angry? Do you turn green and start throwing tanks at helicopters?
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multiple sources say you're wrong
Exactly my thoughts.
I'll be sticking to Windows for my main OS and Xubuntu for my Linux play.
I may give it a try, but I can't really see this becoming big...(2 years later Google has taken over for Microsoft, lolz)
The multitude of other distro's will become the reserve of a very, very small user base.
If Google can create an easy to use OS, based on the Linux kernel then I can see it becoming the default for cheap second, or net surfing PC's.
This has the potential to become another OSX, with the ability to be installed on your hardware of choice.
o_o
However with my netbook, I'm far more open to trying out alternatives. I use my netbook for very little: web browsing and occasionally watching videos. So far, the best OS I've used on my netbook has been OSX. If google can pull off an OS that does the job just as well (that means: very simple to use, intuitive and uncomplicated) then I'll install it the moment the first RC, beta or even alpha is out.
And just before the Applebashers come out of the woodwork, try the damn thing first: for what I need out of a netbook, OSX runs beautifully.
How was i wrong, i said it was a light weight OS for netbooks, and you took this to help your arguement:
So, it backs up what i said, even the second source say, it's targeted at Netbooks, so, from what i can see, i'm far from wrong.
Sam
Browser games should work plus I expect this isnt really meant for gaming as netbook owners are typically businessmen or students on the go.
Having said that, the LucasArts games might work. ;)