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Google's Chrome OS To Launch In Fall

Posted by timothy on from the wish-chrome-would-work-for-my-gmail dept.

Kidfork writes "On Wednesday Google's vice president of product management said that this fall Google will launch Chrome OS to compete with Microsoft Windows. More than 70 million users already use the Chrome Browser, and Google expects at least 1 million users of the OS by day one of release."

5 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Can only guess... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We can only guess what information it will suck up and report back to Google.

    1. Re:Can only guess... by somersault · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If your browser is open source, you can change its behaviour to be in line with what you want. Duh. Then you just have to worry about the security of your actual connection, and what any person or machine at the other end of your connection is going to do with the data you are transmitting.

      Yes, I don't care who knows what I like to buy or do at the cinema. Though I haven't entered any supermarket incentive card schemes because I know they're pretty much just for marketing schemes, and I don't feel the need to squeeze 0.1% extra value or whatever out of every purchase I make.

      --
      which is totally what she said
  2. Re:no, that's not what it's for by Miros · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And why is it impossible to solve the privacy issues in the long run? The way I look at it, if the economic benefits of the "cloud" model are good enough, it's only a matter of time until the other issues are solved over time. Consider checks as an example of this idea. Initially, they seem retarded (I'm going to give you this little piece of paper which is a promise from me to you that my bank will give you this amount of gold if you go there to call on it). Stupid. However, when you consider that the same innovation (banks and checks) allowed you to draw on your account from anywhere that bank had a branch, and enabled you to perform large transactions without having to carry all of your gold with you all of the time, it is obvious that the transactions enabled by the innovation are valuable enough on average to outweigh the risks inherent in the system. Even today there is a tremendous amount of check fraud, but by god, we use them like there is no tomorrow. Why? because without them (and their equivalent financial instruments) our modern society could not exist.

    The new "store everything somewhere else and access it from anywhere" model has very similar risks, but also very similar benefits. Sure, it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than the old model in many ways and will, over time, enable valuable use cases that we have not even imagined yet.

    so, returning to my original question, why can't we solve these concerns in the long run? Because if it's not impossible, it is simply inevitable.

  3. What I want by Miros · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What I want is the ability to save my browser session back to google somehow "in the cloud" or whatever so that I can close my browser on one computer, start up a generic copy of chrome somewhere else, login, and get my entire session restored. If that happened the whole system would just become much more useful, particularly if you are in a landscape littered with what are effectively thin terminals. Imagine that kind of functionality with a mobile device like the iPad or something (ignoring all of the limitations that exist today). Close out on my desktop, transfer to my portable device, go to meetings and w/e without missing a beat or having to take the time to open things on one device that I was already interacting with on another.

  4. Re:Yawn. by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nothing says it has to replace your existing laptop or workstation.

    I'm quite looking forward to ChromeOS. I work there so I'm hoping the big G will give me one for testing, but if not then I might buy one myself if they review well.

    See ChromeOS as kind of like an "extreme" version of the Mac or iPad value proposition. The hardware and software are very closely integrated so you won't get much of the benefit if you're running it in a virtual machine. But if you're running it on hardware designed for it in mind, you get a number of benefits.

    If I look at what I do today with my old MacBook, 90% of my time is spent in Chrome anyway. MacOS' shitty window management just gets in the way, frankly. The only other apps I use are iTunes (for internet radio and occasionally movies rented online), and the terminal emulator. Fortunately shellinabox provides easy access to remote terminals without needing a local ssh or terminal emulator. I have it set up on a colo box I rent from Linode and it works pretty well.

    ChromeOS promises watertight security (as opposed to MacOS/Windows/Linux), an end to stupid update nags, extremely good and consistent performance, simple and efficient window management .... lots more. The downside is that I'll need to use a separate machine occasionally for more power user stuff like programming, at least until a web based IDE like Bespin starts getting good. Other things, like word processing/spreadsheets/PDF viewing/chat/etc can be done via web apps already.

    Also, at some point the promise of NativeClient will arrive and then porting existing native apps (like maybe emacs) to be runnable in Chrome will become possible.

    All that remains is a good multimedia experience really. I can listen to most net radio stations today using Flash, but it wouldn't be as nicely integrated as iTunes. And as for renting movies, well I keep hoping Microsoft will stop sitting on its ass and make Xbox Live movie store work here in Switzerland, but it's been years so I'm not holding my breath. International media licensing is such a disaster zone.

    Basically, I think ChromeOS will deliver a lot of the benfits people see in an iPad but without the obnoxious tablet form factor. It's a clean break, a fresh new OS but with things that actually matter for getting things done, like "keyboards".