Google’s new grill: Chrome is in
Google announced last year that Android would be revolutionary in the way that operating systems worked, and with its phone release, it showed promise.
It seems that even with the warm reception, Google has gone with the majority of the population in saying, So what? As a results, Android has become a thing of the past, in some ways, but does share some responsibility for Google’s next big project: Google’s ambitions in Chrome OS.
Microsoft has long owned the operating system industry with Windows being the OS of choice in the vast majority of homes running PC’s. Even many Mac users have boot-camped a version of Windows to run on their systems as well as OS X. While both OS X and Windows have their differences, they also share a lot of similarities that make choosing between the two not a terribly important choice. Windows compatibility or OS X’s efficiency.
Google now wants to throw in the fight between the two companies that are in the OS business (and Linux is used by such a small version of mainstream society, so it doesn’t count…yet).
Google Chrome OS is built on Linux (yay Linux), and is taking operating systems a completely different route. The idea is, people have these systems with computers that have way more muscle than needed, like using a nuclear bomb to kill a mosquito. Google wants to create an OS that takes the most common usage, such as e-mail, social networking and word processing, make it extremely efficient, and throw it into a browser package to streamline everything, removing the load times from various applications and the need to transfer files here and there. Files can be stored on your home device, as well as retained on a cloud computing drive cluster where they can easily be sent anywhere, from anywhere, without the source needing to be in your hand.
Whether or not this ambitious design will succeed is all up to how well it functions. If efficiency in an office increases simply by removing painstaking load times, allowing more work to get done in a shorter time, offices will find it a lovely alternative to Windows. If it can play games and have widespread compatibility with entertainment software, then it will be an interesting year for Microsoft and Apple.
Rob @ July 10, 2009