Friday, July 10, 2009

Please Stop Comparing Chrome OS to Windows and OSX

Ok i get it. Google's long time rumored OS is finally a reality (kind of). But seriously its something different.

Yes its an OS in some sense of the concept but really its not. Its really a harder push from Google into "the cloud". Google isn't looking to take on MS and Apple by competing head to head with them, that would be silly, those two already fight like children. They're looking to sneak around the squabble and change the game, much the way they became one of the biggest tech companies that exist.

Its kind of silly to talk about this with so few specific details released. But its extremely silly to start saying "this is going to kill windows!" and "bad move by google!". We don't know what it really is yet! We know its a lightweight, web-focused OS based on linux at the core, much like their Android OS. However Android is focused on mobile devices, Chrome will be focused on PCs, specifically netbooks. Netbooks are the key to this. The netbooks experience currently is really terrible. Custom OSs are inadequate so people install linux or XP, but the systems are barely strong enough to handle them (also XP is friggin old). The concept of a netbook is pretty tempting. A small, lightweight, cheap computer that is extremely portable, yes please! So what Google is going to attempt to do is push that bar into an area that no one else is attempting. A cheaper computer that also run well, now were talking. MS claims that Windows 7 will run well on netbooks, and I believe it, but what are the limitations? They have to exist. If Google pushes people to use more cloud applications while thinking they are using a standard application that removes many of the possible limitations.

There is also a huge subset of people that only use their computer to access the Internet. So why not make that experience completely seamless. And who better than Google to pull off this. A company of the Internet, by the Internet and for the Internet. Where MS and Apple are tied down to physical hardware, Google just sort of exists, in its cloud. So what Chrome is going to do is put you right into their cloud.

So Chrome is not going to compete head to head with MS and Apple. Please stop.

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