Google Reveals Chrome Hardware Partners

nk497 writes "Google has announced the hardware partners for the Chrome OS — so we can expect to see netbooks running the operating system next year from the likes of Asus, Acer, and HP, as well as Toshiba. Dell didn't seem to make the list, at least yet. Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."

Comments

Noooo

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything but Acrobat, king of the bloatware!

Air

[xtracto]

Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."

I am thinking more among the lines of Adobe AIR and seamlessly linking the Google OS platform with the AIR API.

Re:Air

[darkvad0r]

I'm guessing this has more to do with flash than anything else. Maybe we'll finally get a flash plugin that doesn't suck on linux

Re:Air

[DuckDodgers]

Sounds great. Get to work.

Re:Air

[swimin]

youtube is owned by google, and I believe its rather popular, and runs on flash. 95% of all video on the net is streamed through flash these days

Marketing.....

[ITJC68]

Is this just smoke and mirrors. From what I have read this is Linux with a custom GUI on the front end. Depending on how they market it and which distro it is built from will probably dictate how far it goes. I use the *buntu and Suse variants of Linux on a daily basis. Unless this offers any real advantage I won't move to it even it I purchase a netbook with it I would probably format and load Ubuntu on it.

Re:Marketing.....

[gsslay]

Unless this offers any real advantage I won't move to it

The real advantage it offers is that Google, a company that the average end user has heard of, is pushing it. There's also half a chance that the OS will be user-friendly enough for the average end user not to run screaming from, unlike most Linux distros. Hell, they may even be able to use it without ever having to see a command prompt.

All this means it's actually in with a chance of competing with Windows on the desktop.

Re:Marketing.....

[Colonel Korn]

It's a linux kernel, not necessarily a distribution in any meaningful sense. They could simplify it to the linux kernel, loader, some libraries, and chrome executable. I suppose they would need a shell, scripts, and helper apps for network config and dhcp, but For a browser-based internet device, 99% of a standard linux distro is irrelevant.

According to Anandtech, which may be mostly speculating, ChromeOS is just enough Linux to run Chrome. All functionality will come from web apps. It's the thinnest of thin clients.

Re:Marketing.....

[DuckDodgers]

Frankly, I still expect Google OS to become at best a tiny portion of the PC market. But that said, they have enormous advantages over other Linux desktop distributions: 1. Name recognition - favorable name recognition - from the average computer user. 2. Massive funding available for QA, pretty graphics, detailed documentation, and so forth. These days Ubuntu and OpenSuse, among others, are damn good, but Google has the resources to do even better. 3. Massive funding available for advertising. 4. The ability to sell machines to end-users with their distribution pre-installed. This has happened before with Linux in small numbers, but even at its peak it was tiny numbers and little attention. This will be available and widely known.

But even with all those advantages, I expect the three way combination of Microsoft FUD, Microsoft genuine attempts to compete by improving their products, and consumer comfort with Microsoft will still leave Redmond controlling more than 90% of the PC market.

Re:Marketing.....

[the_womble]

There's also half a chance that the OS will be user-friendly enough for the average end user not to run screaming from, unlike most Linux distros. Hell, they may even be able to use it without ever having to see a command prompt.

Pure FUD. The only things I have used the command prompt for in the last few months (running Linux Mint, at the machine):

1) ping and dig - and both of those can be done from the GUI, I just prefer the command line.
2) Django manage.py commands
3) ssh into a remove server
4) Restarting lighttpd

Now, how many of those are things the average user would need to do? All my average user stuff (installing desktop apps, web browsing, email, etc.) gets done without a command prompt in site.

Just because the sort of people who read Slashdot need to use the command prompt to get stuff done - stuff that most people have never heard of - does not mean the average user will ever see one.

Re:Marketing.....

[BikeHelmet]

No, your post is pure FUD. I bet you're posting from a top of the line gaming machine right? Bought the parts off newegg, and put it together yourself? Good hardware support, right?

I have an old Dell computer sitting here, which is something the average user would have. Here's the problems I encountered:

1) xorg.conf needed to be manually configured to fix the resolution and refresh rate. It required a lot of cmdline stuff; not as simple as opening the file in gedit and clicking save.

2) Ubuntu 8.10 broke compatibility with the SATA controller, in such a way that it booted okay, and then corrupted the disk while running. This took quite a bit of cmdline work to "fix". I wiped out the partition and installed a SATA PCI card to run the drive from.

3) Permissions wouldn't stick on my ext3 partition. Had to use cmdline rather than Nautilus to get it so users could read files and create new files on the partition. Without doing that, gedit couldn't save anywhere, and I couldn't open anything Firefox downloaded.

No offense to you, but the average user won't tolerate this crap. They barely tolerate stuff like UAC, and this is way beyond that.

I would absolutely love this

[cerberusss]

Just today, I gave a presentation created with Google Docs. WIth the right background and font colors, it was virtually indistinguisable from our usual company its PowerPoint template. Combining all the Google stuff together and you have a situation where you hardly need local storage. So, I'd give the Chrome OS a hearty welcome, even though it might offer too much limitations for others. I've given up my office suite, my IMAP and SMTP server and my webmail. For me personally, it's perfectly usable in business.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[BadAnalogyGuy]

This came to mind when reading your post.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[Yvan256]

You're saying "it was virtually indistinguisable from our usual company its PowerPoint template" like it's a good thing.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[cerberusss]

Thanks for your absolutely heart-warming post! I enjoy the support this board gives me! I have a talking, pink pony which just configured my Linux laptop its WiFi! :D

Re:I would absolutely love this

[mario_grgic]

How does your company feel about you keeping the presentation data on Google servers?

Re:I would absolutely love this

[Anonymous Coward]

My presentations are usually outside my office. Relying on a working internet connection for them sounds like a a major PITA to me, considering how much effort is usually involved for accessing a corporate LAN.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[cerberusss]

My presentations are usually outside my office. Relying on a working internet connection for them sounds like a a major PITA to me, considering how much effort is usually involved for accessing a corporate LAN.

Giving presentations off-site/off-line not the purpose of Google Docs. It's meant for sharing, collaborating and what have you. To do a presentation somewhere, just export to PDF and run it full-screen in any PDF viewer, on any OS.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[cerberusss]

How does your company feel about you keeping the presentation data on Google servers?

Well, I work at an not-for-profit scientific institute, so we are encouraged to share information with the rest of the world.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[rhsanborn]

Because Google wants a platform running all of it's applications in a Google branded environment that google controls. This isn't some altruistic, give to the Linux community effort. This is a business move. And if it drives even more people to their sites, it sounds like a pretty good one.

Re:I would absolutely love this

[blamanj]

How does you company feel about keeping it's money in outside banks?

what is Google's strategic intent here?

[museumpeace]

all the press coverage yesterday characterized google's OS ambitions as an attack on MicroSoft or a counter attack in light of Bing. But to me, an open source OS enhanced for web-top uses sounds mighty like an attack on Intel/Moblin. After all, ARM processors are to be supported too from the little I have read of google's plans.

Re:what is Google's strategic intent here?

[museumpeace]

btw, I should have linked the Moblin pages...there is a LOT of activity on their email feed for independent developers. http://moblin.org/

... so are they evil NOW?

[gun26]

So Google's doing their own OS and partnering with Adobe, the purveyors of the biggest, buggiest and least secure bloatware on your computer. Great. Given the business Google is in - advertising, and the more of it the better - they're likely to take steps to make sure that all those slippery users out there do their patriotic duty and view all ads sent their way, no matter how obnoxious. Is there even an Adblock for Chrome?

Will Chrome OS be any different...

[bogaboga]

...as compared to this? If not then Google will have a hard time convincing me to switch.

Re:Will Chrome OS be any different...

[Aladrin]

Yes. Everyone's heard of Google already and many are using it. Google will be different sheerly because everyone else will be using it and it'll be better supported by both the company and random people you know or meet. Also, you know Google isn't going anywhere for a long, long time.

Re:Will Chrome OS be any different...

[The J Kid]

Also, you can phone up your bank, if their site's not working for you and scream:
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON'T SUPPORT GOOGLE?"
and they'll get with the Google.

Try that with StarForce..

Re:Will Chrome OS be any different...

[maxume]

You just don't have enough money for the bank to care about you (Neither do I).

If someone with enough money calls in, or someone higher up in the bank wants it, I would think it would happen.

Re:Will Chrome OS be any different...

[Corporate Troll]

As someone who has worked in banks and developed eBanking applications, mod this up... You have no idea how true this is.... I (as a developer) told them countless times not to develop for IE only. They didn't listen to me. However, they completely changed faces when a rich-ass Linux user (no kidding, I was surprised too!) called in to complain. Then they put fire under our (the developers) asses, because they wanted it fixed ASAP.

Down with G$$GLE

[Anonymous Coward]

The G$$GLE-borg wants to take away our freedom with their shitty corporate crapware. Thank goodness for Microsoft, I support the feisty Microsoft freedomware guerillas against the evil G$$GLE empire!

Dell's netbooks

[elrous0]

Dell's netbooks are overpriced anyway. Seriously, I went shopping for one recently and their netbooks seemed crazy expensive compared to asus, acer, et. al.

Re:Dell's netbooks

[DuckDodgers]

Most of the laptops people buy come from Compal (Dell, Toshiba, HP) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compal_Electronics and Quanta (Acer, Apple, Compaq, Dell again, Toshiba again, HP again, Lenovo, Sony) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanta_Computers.

So don't get too caught up in which manufacturer is better. Pay attention to value for dollar and service (ha!), the hardware is shared.

Re:No Intel or AMD ?

[wjousts]

These are partners that make computers sold to consumers. Intel and AMD make CPUs that go into those computers and (AFAIK) don't make computers themselves, which is why they are not on this list. Also, they have already announced that they will support both x86 and ARM processors.

Acrobat, huh

[MadFarmAnimalz]

Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way.

Umm, no. Flash.

How Many Years....?

[jDeepbeep]

For how many years will the Chrome OS stay in beta? Place your bets.

People Failing To Grasp Chrome Just Like Android

[Anonymous Coward]

One just has to look at the silly posts back when Android was announced and all the inane and irrelevant garbage spewed about the goddamn iPhone and if Android was an 'iPhone killer'.

With every major cellphone maker coming out with Android phones and demoing their custom interfaces and software built on top of Android and Windows Mobile virtually forgotten about, you would think people would wise up and grasp how huge this move by Google is into the netbook market.

WTF, Google. You're teaming up w/Adobe, too?

[Qubit]

Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way.

First off, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone is teaming up with Adobe to include Adobe web stuff that it's not going to focus on Acrobat but on Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and that whole ecosystem.

That out of the way, what the Flippety Friggery, Google?

You're building a new OS based on the Linux kernel + Chrome Browser, which is cool because these are both high-quality Free Software projects. But then you wander off and sidle up to Adobe instead of working with Free Software such as Gnash.

This seems like a repeat of the situation with the ARM folks. Gnash has had ARM support for several years, but instead of the ARM people collaborating with Gnash to get full Flash support on their processors, the ARM people worked with Adobe to make a whole new port to ARM, instead.

Now Google is working on a slick new OS and has an amazing opportunity to have the whole thing be Free Software. Gnash is getting very mature, and with support from a organization like Google it could easily become the best Flash player on Free OSes, if not on all OSes.

C'mon Google: Team up with Gnash and other Free Software projects and make Chrome OS one for the history books.

2010 will be the year of Linux

[Norsefire]

on the browser.

This is not good for free software

[FourthAge]

From the perspective of the user, what is worse than being dependent on non-free software such as Flash?

Answer - being dependent on non-free software that only runs on someone else's machine as a remote service. The goal of Chrome is to replace customer lock-in to Windows and Office with lock-in to Google's "software as a service". Since customer data will be held hostage by Google, along with the only applications that can read it, no "Openoffice" or "Linux" will be coming to rescue the user from this lock-in. But hey, it's Google, they won't "be evil", right? (hollow laughter).

I am unsure why other free software advocates are supporting this idea, unless the enemy of Microsoft is automatically our friend.

Re:This is not good for free software

[nadaou]

> Google has never been a supporter of Free Software.

This year's Google Summer of Code is providing approx $5M in scholarships for students to work on Free Software projects. No strings attached other than an oversight framework to make sure the system is not abused.

Did anyone actually RTFA?

[sjvn]

There is _no_ news here about who the partners will be. It's just a day-late write-up of the original Google Chrome announcement. This should never have been published as 'news' this late in the game much less Slashdotted.

Steven