So here is the announcement we’ve been waiting for. Over the last three years or so, I’ve had many conversations with colleagues about the likelihood, or rather the inevitablility, of Google eventually releasing its own operating system. It would be based on the web, the browser and the cloud. It would be open source, free, and compatible with multiple hardware platforms. Then we saw the Chrome browser launch, followed by the Android mobile OS. Last night’s blog post may have come without any hype or build-up but it contains few surprises. And that’s great!
The new operating system will be called Chrome OS. It’ll be a custom Linux distribution ‘with a new windowing system‘ which, I assume, means a replacement for X rather than just a new desktop environment. It’ll be open source and according to Google, “the platform for application developers will be the web“.
So the question now is: just how important will this prove to be? Melissa Perenson at PC World has a pretty detailed response, raising a few more interesting questions along the way. Her general feeling seems to match mine: one of guarded optimism but some uncertainty as to whether we’re ready to go 100% cloud based just yet. This was an opinion raised in our editorial meeting this morning too: “I like to own my digital stuff, I can’t and won’t trust the web to do that for me”.
I reckon this will prove to be a significant moment. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Chrome OS’s path was a little more rocky than Android’s has been so far. While Google is apparently already working with computer manufacturers, a truly successful offering would have to be downloadable and installable on pretty much any existing netbook or PC. Which would mean device drivers, compatibility issues and everything else Microsoft puts up with while developing Windows. But if there’s a company with the resources and the skills needed to produce the first widely popular true web OS, it’s Google. I just can’t wait to get my hands on a development build!
