Huge news.

\o/ Yay... Not too impressive at the moment, but if it goes 64 bit then I'm sold.

It's just another window manager

Cool

Agreed. At the moment, It's no more an OS than Windows 3.1 was.

It sounds much more like a GNU/Linux distribution, with a specialised desktop environment. But it has pricked my curiosity, so I am interested to see exactly what they are trying to pull off. It does remind me of one of the Ubuntu derivatives, (the name eludes me,) where it boots to a simple desktop, with buttons for a browser/email/movie player.

I'd guess that netbooks are the main target for now? It's back once again to the thin client!

If they work past the compulsory command line crap (or at least don't sell it as a frickin' positive) then i'll give it a shot.

If they market to specific netbooks, they could avoid a lot of the hassles that come with setting up Linux, (and configuring from the command line,) as they have a specific configuration. You just select your netbook and it automatically configures on install.

All the manual configuration I have encountered has come down to installing modules/drivers, or dealing with specific issues that come from my setup.

I think most of the netbooks are based on very similar designs, so it should be relatively easy to provide the OS to manufacturers and to users as and through an all graphical installation.

I think we're possibly missing the big part of the news though:

They're legitimising a cheaper technology in a highly cost sensitive segment of the market for which Microsoft's only competing product is Windows CE.

EDIT: oh, and I guess it's good for the web in general if it pushes WebKit further, since it helps maintain the number of statistically significant rendering engines at three, hopefully avoiding a repeat of the "this site is designed only for Internet Explorer 6"-type times towards the start of the decade.

That seems to be the holy grail.

MacOS has this advantage, a limited set of hardware, so they can offer those features.

It also has no idiotic registry and, for some reason, application developers have not adopted the practice of installing a bit of themselves to start when the machine is launched, so gets a lot of the not slowing down over time without having to rely on tightly controlled hardware.

In any case, I suspect an implicit part of Google's argument is that people want that sort of OS and they also want to be able to buy small formfactor computers for £200–£300.

EDIT: that said, some very messy software like Parallels Desktop (a virtualisation program) does install a bunch of junk seemingly designed just to bog your computer down. I assume they need the kernel extension, but there's so much other bodgey marketing-type junk that I really would no longer recommend it to anyone who likes their computers to remain sane. For example, it by default assumes that you want all Windows programs to show up as options for file and filetype association within OS X. It assumes this before you first launch the OS and doesn't give you a chance to disable it. If you disable it later on, it'll stop generating new associations but it won't kill the old ones. Luckily, file associations are an inherent property of applications under OS X (ie, not some hacky process of pushing junk into the registry on a first run and, only if well written, asking permission first should anyone else already be connected as the default), so the method it uses of creating miniature program stubs and putting them in an obscure folder in your ~/Library makes them easy to remove if you know what you're doing. However, the digging around and modifying files method of machine maintenance is not exactly what people sign up to OS X for.

And hows this better than the many 'quick boot' systems already in place, e.g. the one embedded in all new asus laptops and being ported to a standalone program that provides web,email, skype, IM.

Sounds like Symphony OS, using Chrome instead of Mezzo.

They've not suggested it is technologically, but I guess it's better for people that want to sell netbooks because it has the Google name — for me "do you want to pay a bit more for Microsoft or pay less and go with Google?" sounds a lot better than "do you want to pay a bit more for Microsoft or pay less and go with Linpus?". As a result, it's good for Google because it really kicks Microsoft in the teeth. Then it's better for you and I if it forces Microsoft to start tending more towards thin and light, optimised for common tasks than engineering everything with a requirement for Windows 3.1 compatibility. If whatever bloat and insecurity Windows still has is a result of its own earlier success (which I think it largely is) then a decent sized competitor coming along and proving that people don't necessarily care about that stuff any more is good for everyone.

Amen.

I like how Google announcing an OS is good news for Windows users.

Yeah, this seems like it's going to bring about positive changes.

I wonder if Google is setting out to make money from this venture by perhaps charging OEMs. That doesn't really sound reasonable though.

EDIT:
And by reasonable I mean counter intuitive. Supposedly it will be open source and freely available for everyone, so why charge OEMS?

They said how it fits into their business model in that post:

I already don't waste time starting my browser to get my email.

Eh. It doesn't sound that bad to me, I guess, but I don't want my OS tied to the internet. If the 'net goes down, I can still remain productive/entertained with programming, watching movies, playing games, modding said games, etc.

When my net goes down, I remain productive by cycling my modem for hours on end in a futile attempt to regain access.

I want to be able to start my car even if the battery is dead by using the hand crank at the front.

I believe the net equivalent of a hand crank would be finding wifi.

If anything, it should encourage cross-platform development and some type of application standards.

This is what I was referring to in my last post, i.e. how is this new google os different

http://www.splashtop.com/

That would be nice. It's been pointed out by some commentators that the cumulative effect of the iPhone's success and the many connected applications that have been written in its SDK is that Apple are quietly carving out the basis for a sort of proprietary internet, exclusive to their touch devices. Assuming Google's agenda is to be able to push very cheap connected miniature laptops both to consumers and as free addons to mobile contracts, this'll ensure that Apple's platform remains much as it is now, mostly just highly customised gateways to the exact same services.

I don't think Apple/iPhone has enough market share to make a proprietary internet very viable outside of the Internet itself. To me, that sounds like an AOL in 1995 kinda thing.

I was excited when I saw the title, but when I actually read the story and saw that it was netbook-oriented I was disappointed. I spend a lot of time on the Web, but I also spend a lot of time concurrently in other things. I'd love to see a Linux-based Windows-killer and Google just might be able to do it. Doesn't seem like they're interested in doing so at the moment though.

I don't find my netbook overly useful for my needs. Partially because of it's size (so it might help for a Web-oriented full-size laptop to be produced), but also because of the default OS that it came with. Hopefully Google does this new OS right so I can actually make use of my netbook. Next to Allegro.cc, I do spend most of my time on Google sites.

Cross platform development? Not really. Google isn't focusing on bringing applications to Linux. They just want another way to distribute Chrome. The non-IE browsers already have enough market share to force developers into supporting them.

I don't think that Google OS will be much more than the crappy thing that comes (came?) with Asus's netbooks.

Everyone I've asked, always said they liked google over anything else because its simple. Theres nothing else to it to worry about. But it's gone from a search engine to an OS? I'm waiting for when they get into BOWs and zombies and Spencer estate like mansions. Then I'll appreciate google.

The argument is that what they're doing is quietly building a proprietary corner of the internet, not that they've already built one. Googling reveals that 37 million iPhone/iPod Touches had been sold up to the end of the second quarter of 2009. Apple could very easily end up owning the internet for handheld devices, given that the iPhone is the most popular single model of phone, they have 20% of that market by total volume and those numbers are dwarfed by the iPod Touches, which lead the MP3 market — where none of the other mobile app stores even have a presence. They've also started to introduce network features that don't port directly to other architectures, such as peer-to-peer discovery (including via ad hoc Bluetooth networks). There's a real risk of lock-in.

The more interesting trend here is the disappearance of the desktop and the convergence of technologies. You can't beat MS at the desktop game.. but the game instead changes.

Cheap, portable computing is everywhere and it will only get better as prices go down and wireless/cellular networks go up. The iPhone is already the 2nd most popular camera on flickr. In this game, the hardware is cheap so the software needs to be cheaper. If microsoft wants to compete they need to cut their price down to less than $20 or so and dramatically improve their product.. and at those prices they will lose a lot of revenue which they depend on to keep their empire as big as it is.

Chrome OS needs to be just enough to support Chrome (the browser); everything else is supposed to run inside the browser, on Google's servers. Which means they can:
- Put ads in all your documents, applications, atc. if they choose to
- Control the software you're using
- Automatically analyze your documents, e.g. to provide yet more customized ads (just like they do with gmail and your search history already)

Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your ideas on privacy, useability, advertising, and some more.

According to whom? That would be a terrible user experience.

According to the whole cloud computing thing. As long as everything runs inside the browser, the OS is relatively meaningless, and you don't need to install anything except an OS with a working internet connection and a browser. With well-written software, the user experience and performance is probably still far from that of applications running locally, but it may be within the realm of "acceptable for average non-techie users", and the huge advantage (again, for average non-techie users) is that you'll never have to install or update anything yourself again, won't have to worry about disk space, backups, hardware requirements, and so on - your cloud computing provider (read: Google) is supposed to do all that for you.
I think I have listed the most important downsides (apart from user experience and performance) in my previous post.

But why do you think that is what Google OS is about? There's no way that HTML and JavaScript on the Web can replace every desktop application. It never can happen.

Cloud computing is possible, for sure, but not by slapping a browser on top of an OS and calling it a day. Google knows that.

From what I read, the Google OS boots directly onto a browser. It is much like Windows booting directly onto Internet Explorer, but instead of iexplore.exe you boot google-chrome.exe or whatever.

Also, I wonder if they will start sending your machine pages to parse, or use it as a googlebot to parse pages for their search...

Well.. with current webstandards no it can't but honestly, email + browsing + pdf = 90% of what I do on a daily basis for work and fun (my ipod touch does that all pretty damned well actually). The other 10% is in writing papers and writing code. Google docs make a not bad rich text editor but has a long way to go to be a real word processor. But the point is, that this OS is targeting netbooks --> portable computing and it will do pretty well at it.

I think if they managed to create the holy grail of cross platform development libraries for writing portable GUI applications between Windows and GC OS (and others) they might start to make a dent in MS desktop market share. But that could all take some time... Or maybe a library that allows developers to compile most Windows applications for GC OS without modification would provide a better solution...

In any case I'd much rather have many options to choose from when it came to running my essential applications then to just be stuck with one forever because my applications will only work with it...

It will be interesting to see where the new Google Chrome ends up and how it effects the competition If I had the source I'd definitely start tweaking, but the same goes for Windows...

I wonder if Europe will force them to remove the browser from the rest of the OS too. Would be funny.

Google ships Europe a blank CD.

That is great.

The funny part is europe didn't force them to remove the browser. MS did it on their own before anything happened.

Eh, that's not really funny. Interesting, maybe.

It is funny considering what you said

FTFY

Quite apart from the observation already made that if you believe Europe is forcing Microsoft to ship without a browser then you're a sucker for Microsoft's PR, exactly how competition law would apply in this case is without precedent, given that the Google product is not only free but of a category of products that is usually free. And it's not the bundling of a free product with a commercial product, it's an entirely free product.

However, I think the most significant observation is that Google have said that the browser is the OS. You can't unbundle the browser because it's the very nature of what is being given away, the one single thing that people buying the relevant computers are interested in. Even if the EU were in the habit of telling people to unbundle browsers — which they're currently not — I think they'd leave Google alone.

Without having looked very firmly at the case, I'll bet that the EU has found Microsoft in breach owing to court procedure being that first you determine if there is a culpable act, then if so determining a remedy. It'd be like if someone was found guilty of shoplifting and told to return to the court the next day for sentencing, went around telling everyone he was going to cut his hands off to remedy the stealing situation and then got his friends to tell everyone how outraged they are that the court is going to cut this guy's hands off.

Google also knows (or so I assume) that cloud computing IS going to be the next big thing; they're not calling it a day, they're taking one step at a time.

GMail was the first step: An excellent mail client that runs entirely inside a browser, and its useability is pretty much on par with traditional clients like Thunderbird or (gasp) Outlook.
Add to that Google Documents: The most common document types can now be viewed and edited in a browser-based application, and while the features are far behind those of MS Office or OpenOffice.org, they are probably enough for average Joe.
With these, I'd estimate 80-90% of all consumer computing activity is catered for - you have your Office suite, e-mail, an image viewer / photo album, web pages are a given. The next logical step then is to remove the need for a high-end computer and bloated OS, and using a cheap netbook with a light-weight OS that is tailored to the need instead.
With both the OS and the Cloud platform in their hands, Google can then do more on the server side, because the client is also under their control; when they need an extension to DHTML, they can just make it and implement it in Chrome (leaving a reduced-feature version for use with other browsers).

I own a G1(HTC Dream) and with every major android update the phone seems to take longer to boot up.
I think it's funny because my phone can do so much more than a normal phone can, but at the expense of doing things as well as a normal phone can.

The mini operating systems like android are bound to start catching on but I don't think they are going to replace laptops/desktops for the majority of people. There is just going to be another player in the computer market in general.

For instance. Laptops, as good as they can be, haven't and simply can't replace a desktop computer. Netbooks and smart phones, as good as they can be, probably won't replace laptops. It basically comes down to, these mini computers will just be another computing devise that I'll wont to own. Another "tool for the job."
After I get dressed each morning I'll look at my desktop, my laptop, my netbook, and my phone and think, "To what level of computing will I need to do today." If there isn't much than my phone will suffice. If there might be a lot then perhaps the laptop. And if I'm just planning to stay home then I'll be on my desktop.

Which brings me to my point. The real "killer" app that is going to modify the general computing market is the data managing app.
Just like TV's as more an more people own and relied on a TV for their day to day life, families commonly owned more than one television.
It's becoming common now for families to own more than one kind of computer. This complicates things as data becomes mixed on more than one system. Which computers have which files, or which file is newer?
ChromeOS would be smart to try and make their priority to sync up as much of this stuff as possible.
I'd love to take a peek at the same documents on my phone that I made on my desktop without having to copy the latest version of the documents to my phone first.

The reason Google has a big opportunity to pull something like this off in front of them, is because they actually have the infrastructure in place.

Same way with Windows Mobile. I can do tons of stuff you would never dream of on a normal phone - watch TV from my slingbox, create a wifi hotspot for internet access, etc. But simple things like 3 way calling are quirky. Then again, I don't talk much.

I would never dream of wanting to ever watch video on anything less than a 14" screen.

Well, I don't you take a bus/train/plane that often.

I used to take buses every day. I would read to pass the time.

The small screen is not a problem if it's a good quality screen.
If you hold the screen closer to your face, then it feels like a 100 inch screen.:o

Plus when your board on public transit or whatever, beggars can't be choosers.

Oh and I hate reading so the book thing doesn't work for me.

I keep telling my wife that, but she won't listen.

Citation needed! /jk
I don't really agree on this: most of the "average joes"s i know are now using a laptop.

Hell, i myself use a laptop whenever not doing heavy (videogames, rendering, compression, ...) stuff. Laptops are smaller, quieter and more practical.

I own only a laptop. A three-year old laptop. It does everything I want from a computer.

If you have no desire to compute on the go, desktops are much cheaper for a given level of power. Otherwise, why waste money on a second computer? Not to mention the hassle of trying to sync everything.

Ok, to elaborate.

On a home user level, laptops could probably replace desktops for the most part on a day to day basis. But having a laptop is essentially having all your eggs in one basket and a nightmare to support.

The hardware replacements/upgrades you can do for a laptop are for the most part limited to RAM, HD, and battery. But anything else breaks hardware wise on a laptop, unless it's under warranty usually means you need to get a new laptop.

On a business/office level, having laptops as your primary computer source is possibly the worst thing that business/office could do, unless they love just throwing money and time away.

(Please spare the requested citations on what I'm about to say next since I'm speaking from experience in the IT field as opposed to from a textbook)
The average longevity of a laptop is at best 3-5 years. A desktop's is much higher.

Personally, I feel it very necessary to have multiple computers. I will even use multiple computers at the same time in many cases. But I know I'm not the average computer user, and many would be fine with just one.
I do however think as time goes on, it will be common for your average computer to need more that a single computer, and more than a single type of computer.
The company that finds the best way to easily sync those multiple computers reliably will come out ahead of everyone else.
Google's a great candidate for this type of work because they are well known as a multi-platform friendly company. For instance, they have their own OS on a mobile phone but still offer the same apps on other phones. Google apps work on virtually all popular platforms.

But laptops are smaller and quieter and easier to setup - and are portable. Even if you don't want to take your computer out of the house, portability is good so that you can computer on a couch, or at your desk, or just so that you can easily move your computer out of the way when you aren't using it. -- and laptops are pretty cheap these days. If it wasn't for high-end games, I wouldn't bother with a desktop.

Smaller isn't necessarily better. I myself don't like laptops because the screens are too small, the keyboards are too small and track-pads are way too small and fiddly for me to be able to use with any accuracy. Sure, I could plug in an extra keyboard, mouse and monitor, but then I just have an under-powered desktop machine.

I plug in a mouse, and feel good.

I rather like my new laptop. Spent a whole $940 cad on it, and its a dual core Core2 @ 2.53GHz, w/2G ram (w/room for 2G more), a 15.1" WXGA+ LED backlit screen, and a 9 cell battery that gives me 5 hours or more of uptime, even when the power is out \o/

Now I could have spent about as much on a new quadcore desktop, but I already have 3 quad core desktop class machines, what I really wanted was a portable machine I could move around easily (yay for redundancy), and one that I could work at even on the couch, or in my room, or heck, ON MY DECK (yay for rhyming).