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Rumours to fact. Its finally official, Google is set to launch their much rumoured PC Operating System mid next year.
Initially targeting the net-book/laptop market, I wonder if the OS arena might finally begin to excite once more. A reminder perhaps of the days when NT went head-to-head with OS/2, or was it the other way around!
The OS market thus far has been pretty one-sided. Current flavour aside, since 2002 we've stuck, in large part, with the third and most refined incarnation of Windows XP, preceded just two years earlier by Windows 2000 and Windows NT dating back to the mid nineties. The infamous OS that defined a new level of stability and with it the advent of the supposedly rare Blue Screen of Death! In parallel with the latter two and skipping the Millennium Edition altogether for reasons best suppressed, Windows 98 Second Edition was released in the late nineties and dare I say it, still the bread-and-butter for an evaporating minority. This was the last of the legacy backward compatible 16/32-bit OS's and with it the end of the much feared General Protection Fault. Rewinding further, Windows 95 was the OS that broke the mould to 32-bit computing and endorsed the Internet boom. Further back still, we had to content ourselves with the 16-bit Windows 3.11 running as a front-end to MS-DOS on the emerging 32-bit hardware. The pre-internet days when the Bulletin Board Service was as popular as it was ever going to get.
 Redmond cleverly instilled a craving, capitalising on their market dominance. The success of Windows across this near twenty year period is practically biblical. Windows currently dominates the OS market by a colossal 88 percent, the second biggest slice going to Mac with a relatively paltry nine point something percent. So that's why viruses don't target Mac users, they're the lone fly in the soup.
Now Google want to muscle in on this market and Redmond has finally got a fight on its hands. If success is on the cards for the now officially christened ‘Chrome OS’, it will likely be down to their sensible-sounding vision for what a PC OS should be. Google claims that current PC OS offerings are based on pre-internet concepts where the OS keeps getting in the way of everything you task. There's a point. Chrome OS is claimed to deliver a web-centric experience, providing fast boot-ups and almost instant browsing capability. Based on Open Source Linux, they'll be orienting the OS toward maximising use of bandwidth chewing cloud technology for their already well established Google Docs platform. “The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web,” wrote Pichai - VP Product Management - Google, adding "applications will all be focused on the web and based out of the browser."
First impressions are that the OS is essentially an Internet browser with little visible else. Great, so we can finally look forward to a gadget that gets you surfing within milliseconds from hitting the power button. That would be seen by many as an attempt to destroy the sacred early morning coffee 'booting' break. Nice, but what about everything else I can do with my PC right now? Well for the most of us, hand-on-heart, there isn't much else we do with our PC that can't be done in the cloud. Sure, we spend hours surfing the net, sifting through the piles of email, dabbling with figures on the spreadsheet, composing stiff documents on the word processor, preparing that glamorous presentation, tap away chatting and very occasionally have a go at a database just to confirm that we can still cut it with the geeks. Stuff which according to Google is all very do-able in the cloud. Oh, and sure, we also spend time fending off mal-ware and dealing with wave after wave of spam. But these are tasks, which in the cloud shift the onus onto the operator.
So if my imagination stretches far enough, we're looking at a device that boots straight into a web browser, has little capability to host viral infection and even lesser reason for hitting a lamppost. In a nutshell, a boringly reliable appliance that remaps the parameters of doing things. Say hello to your new Cloud Computer a.k.a. the CC and bye to your PC or just about. All productivity will be done on-line, data will be stored on-line, accessible from anywhere in the on-line world and totally at the mercy of your ISP who hopefully won't expect you to organise contingency planning if they go off-line!
Clearly Google have made a tremendous investment in their Docs platform and Chrome OS represents the last piece in their strategy to make their cloud a viable solution. I don't perceive Chrome OS as a replacement for the current PC Operating System but rather as a complimentary platform which will take its place in the casual productivity arena. Specialised applications will remain the domain of the PC OS especially where data confidentiality and bespoke business processes are prolific. Exciting times ahead for sure, but possibly only a nibble at Redmond's slice of the pie. |
Head to head with Redmond
