Keeping Google's Consumer OS Options Straight

According to Engadget, among others, Google is expected to show off the state of the Chrome OS on Tuesday of this week, and perhaps even to show off a netbook running the cloud-centric system. Since many of the things that Chrome OS does are also within the scope of Google's other consumer OS, Android, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has written a guide to the differences, as he sees them, between Android and Chrome OS.

Comments

WARNING: Tech writer needs to learn tech!

[LynnwoodRooster]

FTFA:

As for Android applications, where all the applications are Java-based and depend on Dalvik, I don’t see any way that those applications will run on Chrome OS.

Yes because putting a Java JIT engine in a browser is easy; putting a Dalvik JIT engine in a browser is impossible! Google has NO WAY to leverage the base of tools and programs already created for their first OS, they will have to start from scratch...

Re:WARNING: Tech writer needs to learn tech!

[igreaterthanu]

What would the point in that be anyway? Why not just use Android?

The only use I see for Chrome OS is for dual boot to quickly check something online.

Re:WARNING: Tech writer needs to learn tech!

[91degrees]

Quickly checking something online does actually cover most of the functionality of my netbook.

Re:WARNING: Tech writer needs to learn tech!

[ProppaT]

Because Google understands the importance of a good UI that does what it's meant to do, easily. Android is designed around a touch screen concept. Chrome OS is designed around a standard mouse/touch pad and keyboard input combination. It's one of the reasons why Win Mobile failed all these years. They tried to force a desktop interface onto a device that most definitely could not be used as a desktop. It's also the reason why tablets didn't become popular when they were first introduced 5-6 years ago running Windows XP.

Re:WARNING: Tech writer needs to learn tech!

[DragonWriter]

Yes because putting a Java JIT engine in a browser is easy; putting a Dalvik JIT engine in a browser is impossible!

First, Google can include things in Chrome OS that aren't part of the browser, and can allow the browser to provide access to them, so it wouldn't have to put the JIT engine in the browser.

Second, there is no reason that Google couldn't build a Dalvik engine into the browser if they chose to. Heck, Chrome already includes facilities to run sandboxed arbitrary native code (Native Client), so certainly Google doesn't show any signs of conforming to conventional ideas of what "can't" be done in the browser.

Google already has a Dalvik engine, building hooks for it into Chrome -- whether specific to Chrome OS or more generally -- is certainly not impossible.

Google has NO WAY to leverage the base of tools and programs already created for their first OS, they will have to start from scratch...

Google explicitly stated a long time ago that their long-term plan was to converge the two platforms. I doubt that they have that plan and no vision of how to accomplish that, and "throw everything out and start over" is probably not the course to convergence they have in mind.

Re:Straight

[psergiu]

ChromeOS vs Android - same as OS X vs iOS - the same Unix OS with a different interface and GUI libraries.

Keeping it straight-ish

[Chrisq]

I don't know how to reconcile these differences with Sergey Brin's assertion that "Android and Chrome will likely converge over time". Does this mean that all we can say us:

1. 1) Android is for Phones & Tablets; Chrome OS is for Netbooks for now but they may converge into a universal system
2. 2) Chrome OS won’t run Linux desktop or Android Apps ... yet
3. 3) Chrome OS Constantly Updated, but may go into a release cycle later as its capability expands [this isn't really an OS difference anyway]

Or was the likely convergence prediction premature?

The simpler OS on the more powerful hardware?

[Jugalator]

He claims that Android is for the smaller formats, and Chrome OS for the netbooks. It's funny if this is Google's goal, since the netbooks use to have much more flexibility in offering better hardware and performance, not being tied to a small form factor, and then give it the OS that offer only a subset of Android's functionality. Android offers a full OS running native applications, along with the Chrone web browser -- where the latter is the *only* thing Chrome OS offers.

I always found this aspect of Google's new operating systems weird. If Google were serious about Chrome OS, shouldn't that one have been aimed for the phones and tablets, with Android for the netbooks? Chrome OS is at least the OS that does less, and is more simple to the end user. It can basically only run a web browser (and all underlying stuff that's necessary to run that web browser compiled for Linux, of course).

Re:The simpler OS on the more powerful hardware?

[Daengbo]

Chrome OS is Google's enterprise push on top of Apps. it need a lot of bandwidth. the mobile world hasn't gotten there yet. expect Android to become more like Chrome OS over time.

Re:The simpler OS on the more powerful hardware?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It remains to be seen how expansive Google's interpretation of "web app" is...

With their NaCl project, it could include entire native binaries, "installed" just by going to a web page, cached via HTML5 methods, sandboxed for security. Such a model wouldn't be very "web" of them; but it would mean that ChromeOS can do basically everything except run legacy applications not designed for it.

Re:The simpler OS on the more powerful hardware?

[joh]

If Google were serious about Chrome OS, shouldn't that one have been aimed for the phones and tablets, with Android for the netbooks? Chrome OS is at least the OS that does less, and is more simple to the end user. It can basically only run a web browser (and all underlying stuff that's necessary to run that web browser compiled for Linux, of course).

I think Google was somewhat surprised by the success of Android. As so often Google threw lots of things at the wall and then looked what kept sticking. Android stuck extremely good and then Google looked at it and noticed they can't profit that much from it.

Google is all about the Web and Chrome OS is nothing than a web browser. Use Chrome and you use the web and nothing else, which means you're bound to get served ads by Google and that's what Google wants. Use Android with lots of apps and the browser being just one app among others is not helping Google much.

Google has never been really excited about Android being used on tablets, they actually tried very hard to convince everyone to use it only on smartphones. And now they still try to get Chrome OS at least onto netbooks.

I don't think anyone will care much about what Google wants. Smartphone, tablet, netbook... running nothing but webapps sucks on all of them.

Re:Why Chrome OS now?

[Daengbo]

Single signon to google apps in thirty seconds from cold boot.

Re:Why Chrome OS now?

[icebraining]

It's not a replacement, Chrome OS uses the Chrome Browser. It's a replacement for Windows/MacOSX/Ubuntu/etc, for people who just use web apps anyway, or to have a faster OS for dual-boot and access some site.

Just putting my 2 cents in

[MorpheousMarty]

IMHO the only way Chrome OS is interesting is if it is released on netbooks that cost 150-200$ less than their Windows counterparts. Sure, it won't do everything a full OS does, but at a $250-300 price point, it would be very compelling for the same reasons netbooks were popular in the first place. If Chrome OS can bring netbooks back to their bare bones, dirt cheap, linux roots, they may have a hit on their hands. If they offer this for about the same price as a Win7 netbook, they shouldn't even bother.

Anyone else have any ideas how this could be an interesting/successful product?

Re:Just putting my 2 cents in

[vikisonline]

Yes, because running JavaScript and Ajax applications is so much faster than running native ones. /sarcasm/ And yes really how often are you without internet. Ooh can't connect to a wifi/my internet is out , I guess I wont do my homework...

Re:Just putting my 2 cents in

[Chrisq]

Isn't Windows XP licensed for netbooks at around $40? I doubt you will see much of a price decrease.

There could be other factors like reduced need for local storage, (maybe) running better on a lower spec. processor and with less memory.

Re:Just putting my 2 cents in

[Chrisq]

Besides, since when did the average PC buyer, comparing two systems, take into account the OS performance and determine that a lower spec machine with a faster OS would be a net gain? For most users it's all about how many RAMs or gigglehurtz they get for their buck.

Very interesting point. Say ChromeOS did perform better on a lower spec machine then people appreciating it would be the most technical users, who would understand this and the least technical who wouldn't bother about GBs and GHz but just saw that it worked reasonably quickly.

The "middle" users would say "This has only 1GB of memory and a 1Ghz arm processor ... it can't be as good as the 2GB 2.2Ghz Intel machine" and reject it. The question is where does the average user come - in the bottom or middle group?

Re:Straight

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Rather more than that. Android is largely Dalvik VM with some native access to the underlying stock-but-pretty-spartan-linux. ChromeOS offers sandboxed web pages as a sort of "VM" with as yet unknown levels of native access via NaCl, and likely support for certain other applications(PDF reader, Flash, etc.) running natively on what is likely to be the underlying stock-but-pretty-spartan-linux.

Substantially more architectural difference.

And this is progress?

[Twinbee]

I'm closer to being a Google fan than most probably, but after seeing the video, they intend to abolish the desktop, and nothing (yes none of your own files) will be stored on your own computer. I'm sorry, but ignoring everything else, I dread the amount of lag if everything ran off the internet. Programs such as Photoshop or Visual Studio would download every time instead of run immediately? No thanks.

In a perfect world with infinite bandwidth, and no lag, maybe it's doable.

What would make me truly respect them is if they came up with something like BeOS, or QNX (Haiku), but which also had a metadata/database file system where everything is searched for, and folders become less of an issue (or not needed at all). Encouraging programs to be more self-contained would also be a step forwards too.

Re:And this is progress?

[yelvington]

I dread the amount of lag if everything ran off the internet. Programs such as Photoshop or Visual Studio would download every time instead of run immediately?

That's now how it works.

Re:And this is progress?

[delinear]

I think the intention is that either the app would run on the server side and you'd just have an in-browser JavaScript GUI (so instead of downloading that 60MB PSD you're working on, you'd get a 200k PNG represenation or whatever), OR the libraries etc required to run the app would be cached client side (using HTML5) so the app can run almost entirely locally. I suspect Google would like the first approach, since it puts everything in "the cloud" - their domain - but in reality I think companies will like the second approach, since it means they don't need to provide dedicated servers capable of running all these apps.

CACHE MANIFEST and localStorage

[tepples]

There could be other factors like reduced need for local storage

Chrome OS runs web applications, and web applications that can work offline must make heavy use of CACHE MANIFEST and localStorage, both of which can be big if someone tries to implement photo management (from your Android-powered camera?) as an offline web app.

Re:Straight

[Cytotoxic]

I sounds like the "chrome OS" that users see is really running remotely at Google, with only enough OS locally to support the browser. Basically, they've reinvented the thin client.

OK so with high end hardware

[Sits]

you can do quite a bit better than a Chrome OS netbook can. The question becomes - how much did it cost to buy the Macbook Pro and then put a 3rd party SSD in it? Is a Chrome OS netbook without such power going to cost less (it certainly going to DO less than your setup so I can't imagine it would be as expensive)?