nationElectric ([info]nationelectric) wrote,
@ 2009-07-08 10:36:00
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O hai
You may remember a few months back, when I waxed all poetical about Google Chrome:

At the moment, it just looks like another web browser, although one that's fast with a clean design. Mark my words, though: over the next few years those tabs are going to melt away into individual windows, and Chrome (and other similar web browsers) will meld more and more transparently into your operating system until they become invisible, and it becomes very difficult indeed to figure out where your desktop ends and where the internet begins. Your operating system will still matter, but most non-technical folks will probably have a pretty difficult time explaining, or caring, exactly why... and really, that's how it should be.

Well, yesterday:

So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

...

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Now, to be honest, this prediction wasn't that impressive: others were saying similar things, and this is sort of the inevitable direction in which things are going.

And yet.

And yet...



Boo-yah, bitches.

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[info]red_tanya
2009-07-08 04:32 pm UTC (link)
all of our relatives we do tech support for? you know, the ones who have no idea that there are web browsers and mail clients and things called "applications" on their computers? The ones who think Microsoft Word is a web page and don't know what happened to that file they didn't save?

this will let us get them a netbook and no longer worry about such things. Seriously, get grandma on Google docs...

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[info]philkensebben
2009-07-08 04:58 pm UTC (link)
You remind me of the arguement that Microsoft made during the anti-trust hearings when they said that the browser was too tightly integrated into the OS to remove.

The simplicity of the Chrome based OS is very compelling.

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[info]totalfantasy
2009-07-08 06:04 pm UTC (link)
5 Reasons why Google Chrome OS will FAIL!
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/168058/five_reasons_google_chrome_os_will_fail.html

I like google and all but I have the nasty feeling they will go the way of 3com and Netscape sooner or later. Microsoft... now that's just a beast that won't die. At this point it's just a ton of different companies operating under the Microsoft banner. Apple? Dead when Jobs kicks it. Betcha $10.

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[info]nationelectric
2009-07-08 07:56 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I saw that. The article should be titled "5 reasons why google chrome os COULD fail." And sure, its failure *would* be inevitable, if it was trying to compete with microsoft to replace windows with another conventional desktop operating system.

Cloud computing looks to be the future. Microsoft's known that for years, which was what the whole battle with netscape was over. And yet, they've been remarkably poor about adapting to that reality. IE is still very, very below par. Their line of server OS's and developer tools is certainly well-entrenched, but they don't own that space by any means. They haven't even successfully launched a new desktop OS since XP. The idea that they could turn around and redesign windows into a cloud-centric OS is... well, it's certainly not implausible, but I doubt it will be quick, or smooth.

But even if they do, there's no guarantee that they'd be able to carry their dominance forward. As we move towards cloud computing, the browser will become more and more what defines the desktop, and we'll see competition in the desktop space look more like competition in the browser space. Eventually, we'll see a Firefox OS. Hell, we'll probably see a Firefox and Chrome OS running ON TOP OF windows.

Let's be clear about what we're talking about: strictly speaking we're not seeing a new OS so much as we are a new desktop manager. Google chrome is going to be repackaged to run on top of a slimmed-down linux distro. There's no reason, in principle, why they couldn't do the same for Windows or OS X or whatever else. This would be more bloated, but would also provide a transition path for users of legacy desktop applications. The old OS becomes relegated more and more to handling low-level system functions, and everything else packaged in it gradually becomes cruft, becomes a liability. After all, why do I care about the file explorer, when all of my files live on some server? While this transition to a true cloud desktop is occurring, Chrome will continue to grow, becoming more refined, becoming more familiar, becoming more trusted. And, of course, a thinner cloud OS already makes a lot of sense for a lot of users RIGHT NOW. It makes sense for me to install on my secondary machine, and, once it's matured a little, it probably makes a lot of sense as the primary OS for my folks and a number of a my friends.

Remember the big picture. The whole point of cloud computing is that all of your applications and all of your data live on servers. The desktop becomes much less important, and the real fight moves into the server space. This is a space which, again, microsoft has failed to capture at the platform level, and where google is clearly leading it at the service level. That's why google is doing this: they don't care about "winning" the desktop, they want to factor it out of the equation as much as possible. This is a long-range play for them. Even if microsoft retains the desktop, but transitions windows to a credible cloud computing UI, google has still won. They've shifted the terrain to where they want to fight -- on the service side.

Sure, there will be large corporate and government installations that will want to stick with windows for a while during this whole process -- but the ongoing trend has been for organizations to move more and more of their applications online, and this will only accelerate that trend.

I somewhat agree with you about apple, although I think it will be a somewhat gradual process. The strength of their engineering will carry them forward a little farther, but the lack of unifying vision will eventually lead them back to late-night infomercials and, ultimately, the dust bin. Of course, that has a lot less to do with microsoft than with, well, apple.

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[info]achild
2009-07-09 02:46 am UTC (link)
"Remember the big picture. The whole point of cloud computing is that all of your applications and all of your data live on servers."

Right, I remember this one. When I was growing up, there was a thing called a "mainframe" at his office and all the little client PCs connected in to it.

What a novel concept.

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[info]anarchetic
2009-07-09 10:33 am UTC (link)
And from a (bitter) sysadmin's point of view, wasn't it wonderfully easier? People having their "own" computers is a nice idea, in theory .. in practice it really doesn't seem to work.

I really regret the passing of dumb client / terminals, though in this day and age we'll need something a little bit smarter. Plus we can hopefully set-aside the worries over freedom - if the software running the terminals and the web services is open, there should be plenty of competitors to choose from.

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[info]nationelectric
2009-07-09 04:17 pm UTC (link)
True, although the motivations are different. Initially, it was motivated by scarcity of hardware, computing power, and connectivity. Now, it's motivated by *abundance* of hardware, computing power, and connectivity -- I have a powerful machine in my pocket (ba-dum *CHINK!*), one on my desk at home, one at work, etc., etc., etc., and I want to use the same data & applications from all of them. Hell, the very fact of that abundance causes the amount of digital data I have to explode -- I have so much damn data to keep track of because I have so many damn devices that can record, store, and present it in so many different ways.

I think ultimately, as hardware and connectivity get even more ubiquitous, we'll move towards some massive p2p system that stuff just invisibly replicates across, and where the only real criterion that most people (including power users & developers) care about is form factor... but that's still a ways off.

The important immediate issue, it seems to me, is in assuring that *my* data remains *my* data, and is treated as such, no matter who's hosting it. I want a stronger guarantee that google won't fuck me than a mission statement.

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[info]willful_zephyr
2009-07-08 07:11 pm UTC (link)
... a new windowing system ...

I love how they just throw that out there like it was a trivial task.

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[info]anarchetic
2009-07-09 10:38 am UTC (link)
If it doesn't need to be network-aware in the same way as X, it becomes a little bit simpler. Plus I don't imagine they'll start completely from scratch. Last time I checked, an awful lot of GTK (for example) can run on top of Cairo - I doubt it would be that much work to finish the job (if it hasn't been already), and then pick an appropriate back-end for it (or write / tweak one.) Anybody know what Android does here?

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[info]willful_zephyr
2009-07-09 01:58 pm UTC (link)
I don't mean this is difficult from a technical standpoint. It is difficult from a design standpoint.

Anyone can put together a windowed desktop management system - there are lots out there. A good number of them are free, but Windows still dominates the market. Figuring out HOW people expect to interact with this system, especially a system that hits the mark for people of widely varying computer skills, is very, very, very hard.

Google has a lot of brains, but they don't have experience in this space. I think they are capable of doing it right, but not if they come at it as something to be thrown together.

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[info]anarchetic
2009-07-09 09:44 pm UTC (link)
Windows dominates the market because of network (different meaning) effects. People have become used to the Windows UI, so that is what they expect, and don't invest time in anything else.

With regard to the web, though .. people think differently. Most people don't even seem to notice when I substitute Firefox for IE on their systems. I even installed Chrome on the machine in our common room recently, and removed the links to IE and FF, and have had no complaints so far. If I was Google I'm not even sure I'd be bothering with window management. Make it all look like the web, even any local apps and system config tools, and people will quite happily swallow it..

(Reply to this) (Parent)
This is only slightly related, but I was running tests at work today, and...
[info]achild
2009-07-09 02:45 am UTC (link)
Chrome gets a virtual 100 on the acid3 test. Not quite perfect, but close.
Safari does a little better, even on windows.
Firefox is a 93
IE takes one look at the other three and immediately starts to cover itself in urine and feces in an attempt to scare everyone away.

Google has a real chance to actually make this work, certainly more of a chance than most major players. They could very well develop something that truly kick ass. That said, I don't know that I really want my OS running JS. Also, google knows enough about me as it is. I don't really want them in my Operating System.

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Re: This is only slightly related, but I was running tests at work today, and...
[info]nationelectric
2009-07-09 04:22 pm UTC (link)
HAH! Oh, god. Desktop javascript. THE HORROR.

They're at least promising to open source the OS, which (from google) is a credible promise. That should cut down on the potential for shenanigans -- not absolutely eliminate it, but at least provide some assurance. I think the big privacy issue isn't on the desktop itself, it's that the desktop strongly encourages me to move all of my data to their servers, and god knows what happens to it THERE.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: This is only slightly related, but I was running tests at work today, and...
[info]anarchetic
2009-07-09 10:05 pm UTC (link)
Google have consistently proved themselves remarkably less evil than the nearest comparable (Redmond-based) IT company. This is dispite the fact that, being more data-focused, their potential for evil is actually higher.

A certain healthy, cynical wariness towards Google is to be encouraged, but I don't understand the level of deranged paranoia exhibited towards them that I see in certain Slashdot comments, for example. MS, on the other hand, have a long history of past actions that prove that all budding geeks should read this book at a very early stage in their lives ..

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[info]anarchetic
2009-07-09 10:41 am UTC (link)
I'm hoping this will revive the netbook concept.

What do I mean by that?

I've got an early eee PC. It's cheap, small, fairly efficient, the built-in OS just about runs at reasonable speed, but FF is rather slow. The next generation of netbooks have got much more expensive, bigger, faster, to the point where they might as well be laptops, which rather defeats the point. This, presumably, has been done to make the user experience of the OS (which is now usually Windows) better.

Hopefully with Google chucking brains at the problem, and aiming for something only heavyweight enough to run Google Apps at a decent speed, the hardware can get lighter again ..

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