Tuesday, July 28, 2009

On Google Chrome OS

So, I've decided to talk about it after all, being that the web hype has died down and that every site I seem to look at seems to blow what this is completely out of proportions and glorify it as the next best "Windows killer".

Chrome OS is nothing but Google Chrome atop of a Linux kernel, it'll do nothing that you couldn't do with Google Chrome on Windows, Linux or Mac. The applications that Chrome OS supports are the same one's Google Chrome supports, end of story.

Googles only goal in creating Chrome OS is to gain market share for Google Chrome, lower the market share for IE6, get people to use the web and web apps more (this doesn't necessarily mean the cloud though, I'll explain later) and get a larger userbase for web developers to be able to use HTML5 and standards compliant code in their sites.

Now the other thing about Chrome OS that alot of sites have seemed to skip is [again] the fact that all apps that run in Chrome will run on Chrome OS. So every time I saw a blog or a comment that said Chrome OS will fail since it can't run native code, I'd always point them to Native Client and the fact that Google plans to integrate Native Client into Google Chrome (thus meaning that Native Client will also come to Chrome OS).

And as for those who say Chrome OS will fail because it requires the internet, I point them to Google Gears(which it already built into Chrome so that's self explanitory).

And then the biggest assumption I keep hearing is that Google plans to use Chrome OS to push the cloud computing industry, now that's a large possibility but I don't think that means that they plan to abandon offline computing. I think one of the longterm goals here is to standardize the desktop the same way the web has been standardized whilst using that to push use of the web further, think of it as Adobe Air on every PC with a few much needed additions like Native Code support.

All in all, I'm waiting to see what this means and if my predictions are right. Plus I'm waiting for Mozilla, the company that never sleeps, to start on their own Firefox OS or something along that line.