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Chrome OS and Android "Will Likely Converge" In the Future
xchg writes "When Google first announced that the company would be pursuing development of two distinct operating systems, many questioned Google's motivation. 'Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, have downplayed the conflict ever since, asking for time to let the projects evolve. And a few days after Chrome OS was revealed, Android chief Andy Rubin said device makers "need different technology for different products," explaining that Android has a lot of unique code that makes it suitable for use in a phone and Chrome has unique benefits of its own. But Brin, speaking informally to reporters after the company's Chrome OS presentation on Thursday, said "Android and Chrome will likely converge over time," citing among other things the common Linux and Webkit code base present in both projects.'"
with the new google os "Chromeiod"!
Google have the same problem as Microsoft: they're too successful. They have a river of cash flowing through the front door and an allergy to paying dividends to shareholders.
Thus they're pursuing what I call the "spaghetti cannon strategy". They blast buckets of spaghetti up against the wall and hope that some of it will stick.
Eventually any such company becomes large enough that it cannot coordinate what the various bits and pieces are doing. The self-cannabalising overlap of Android and ChromeOS is a symptom of the spaghetti cannon working overtime.
Because god forbid you send any of the profits to the people who paid money to own part of a wildly profitable company.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Leopard. It makes a good deal of sense. And if kept open, very very enticing. You could alter your smartphone/desktop in almost limitless ways.
They need to revoke his day passes and internet access at that hospital...
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
I might as well just bite the bullet and buy an iPhone now...
This is a classic troll from the turn of the century.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I wonder if this means Android will converge towards a more standard Linux, or if Chrome will converge to become less standard. Or if they'll keep the unique aspects of each and just try to unify stuff like browser code. I don't really fancy a phone that can only run web apps, or a "PC" that can only run Java apps compiled to a weird byte code! I don't really like the way Android has reinvented all of userspace, whereas at least Chrome builds on existing code a bit more. But they are solving different problems, which perhaps explains *some* of the differences...
If Google shareholders take windfall profits now and try to mature the company early, they will be killing exactly what makes it innovative. It is not in the long term interests of Google to do that. Remember long term? Before we had day traders and similar idiots trying to turn everything into a casino, we had companies like IBM that were hugely innovative and came up with things like relational databases. Real innovation requires long term commitment and a great deal of luck. You make your own luck by funding people like Cobb, or Mandelbrot, and wait for them to lay golden eggs. Can't do that if the shareholders are whining that they want all their (unearned) profits out, now.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Maybe they could also add an X11 server, Gtk+, and Python? Just a thought.
Its funny google talks about "unique code" when they are using webkit and linux.
The article seems to assume Android and Chrome OS will converge into a single product. That is one possible way for converging. But another possibility is that they would be built from the same code base, but still have a different UI for different size devices.
I like Chrome, but I also like Android.
But which is better? There's only one way to find out....
FIIIIIIIIGHT!!
That's Maemo, not Android.
Deleted
Google has had the foresight to cut their losses before...
I have an Android phone. It was a gift from Google. Admittedly, it was an early version so maybe Android 2.0 looks better, but frankly when compared to an iPhone it looks like a high school science fair project. I'd rather pay for an iPhone than use the Android phone for free.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Have two bloated OS'es? I fail to see any substancial benefit from it.
The only tangible benefit (if it ever happens) is NativeClient support on Android, if this ever comes to ChromeOS (something people have been speculating for a long time).
Isn't this a huge impetus for Linux, one would imagine a lot of funding would move from Google to the various sub projects that go into making Linux, that in turn support Google's android and chromeos initiatives. Given this is one of the more important forums for Linux discussion one would thought there would be more indepth analysis of Google new love for Linux, on Linux, sadly we see the same old discussion we are seeing everywhere else from the google angle, but this benefits Linux.
Re Chrome OS vs. Android...
It sounds like a wise strategy: survival of the fittest.
I always knew that Google would eventually move into the OS space. Being such an important move, Google is rightly cautious, and developing multiple technologies is the best way I can think of to mitigate the risks.
Both seem very limited and aimed at cellphones essentially. So it does seem they have huge overlap.
I was hoping Chrome OS would be more functional than Android (sort of lightweight Linux replacement) but it seems the opposite. It is just a browser. Yawn.
I really can't see the point of maintaining two cellphone "OS type" products.
We see a first version of "AEGIS" like bootstrap in a (soon) dominant operating system - with the pervasiveness of TPM chips currently and virtualization technologies one could have imagined this would happen. Unfortunately, this can have huge implications towards freedom and I am not going to bet on the fact that Google won't start censoring past information, or cooperate with governments. Read a bit about trusted computing and the censorship of past information/events. This is a strong weapon and I hoped the fears to have such a system available world-wide would never materialize. Shocking is that it is Google, the geeky darling, that is doing that. I expected that coming from Microsoft which already failed in the task with Vista.
Why is Google acting this way? The fact that such a system can be built is not a reason to build one. I guess we should start checking who is pulling the strings at Google. This starts more and more resemble a system for secret intelligence.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"
Not a bright future for Internet freedom ahead...
...no one should be asking.
The whole point of mobile apps is that they're supposed to be for situations where you don't have a lot of hard drive capacity to be holding applications. To condemn laptops to lives as portable dumb terminals makes no sense to me. (And I've tried Chrome OS within VirtualBox, so I have at least some base of reference.) You can get decent battery life without castrating a machine, and local storage gives you a much better experience.
I understand that the current version of Chrome OS isn't how it's going to stay, but the design philosophy itself is absurd. Google should release much more powerful Web apps if they want anyone to take the idea of a laptop Web OS seriously.
If the Chrome OS is only an access point into a Google (or other) cloud then it is of no interest to me and shouldn't be of interest to anyone else. I haven't come this many years down the road of "personal" computing to hand over control of my apps and data to some faceless corporation. Doesn't anybody else feel Big Brother tapping on their shoulder?
Like the inimitable Groucho Marx, I would never join a club that would have me as a member.
Android is a production product that must meet the needs of consumer devices today. Android's success as a production product today depends on its level of refinement and ability to function reliably on technology that exists today. Chrome OS's success as an R&D platform today depends on it retaining the flexibility to make rapid, sweeping changes as an experimental testbed.
Google doesn't presume to know what the smart phone and mobile internet device markets will look like in 5 years time, other than that Google technology will be a big part of it. That's more than many other companies can say.
Those criticizing Google should recognize that were Chrome OS an R&D product at any other company, we might hear about it through a few trade shows and blogs, but that would be it, and no sane commentator would be suggesting it be put into production or merged with a production platform.
Chrome OS will work with flash drives, and USB hard drives.
.... if you downloaded the source and made your own version of ChromeOS (PlatinumOS?) that synchs and authenticates against your own server instead of theirs..)
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
How true! Instead of trying to confuse things and try to hitchhike a ride on Linux success, people who try to prepend a GNU/ on everything should study history and learn where this "operating system" definition started.
There was a time when every computer was dedicated to running a single program at a time, it often took hours to switch from one program to the other. In many computers configuring hardware to run different tasks involved plugging patch cords into sockets.
An "operating system" was the software that let the computer hardware be shared among different users with less hassle. In that context, the equivalent of what was initially called an operating system would be a set of device drivers and a task scheduler, exactly what Linux alone does.
Of course, language evolves and what was called an "operating system" in the 1960s would not be the same thing today. But that should be for the people to decide, the GNU/ trolls are very obnoxious in trying to force an usage that the general public never came up with spontaneously.
Nothing makes me shiver more than the attrocity known as the web browser becoming the primary application platform.
Wake up grandpa, it happened a few years ago. Apart from a few novel iPhone apps, all the inventive mass-market "applications" in the last few years have been things you run in the browser. As web sites get brave enough to treat MSIE as legacy crap and use HTML5 goodness like SVG and the canvas, audio and video tags, the web application advances will only accelerate. Bitch all you want about how you don't like the languages of the web, meanwhile everyone else does groundbreaking work that's immediately runnable by an audience of a few hundred million.
=S
It is a real surprise they are going to merge chrome and android. /Sarcasm
Will we be able to code C native apps on their OSes?
...being a subset of Windows.
I'm sure Google had to promise the telcos adopting Android phones that the telcos could "own" their version of the OS. Which means releasing ChromeOS to the public, untied to a given HW platform, vendor or distributor as a "different" OS lets the telco cartel keep plodding down that smug path. Especially now, in the first few years while telcos are just gearing up to sell and support Android phones, telcos could just drop it if their monopolies seem threatened.
But Google gets to release upgrades to each OS. Over time, Google can release converging versions of ChromeOS and Android. Within a couple years, the two OS'es can be identical except for their brands (and perhaps their bundled drivers, if indeed different kinds of HW tend to prefer one OS or the other). A single API for a single developer pool. Indeed, if that API has enough in common with the base GNU/Linux such that Android and ChromeOS are just another distro (or two flavors of one, like Ubuntu server vs desktop vs notebook) that developers can use third party libraries tools for a single target, Google will have run circles around the telcos. And Microsoft, and Apple, and Red Hat, and Ubuntu, and everyone else competing in the oddly rebootable OS market.
--
make install -not war
I think its just a response to tax policy. Money spent on dividends directly reduces the value of stock compared to not paying the dividend, and since (but for fairly recent tax policy changes that sunset soon, and so would form a poor basis for corporate policy changes) long-term capital gains are more favored under the tax code than dividends, offering dividends is directly contrary to the financial interests of the shareholders.