The much-discussed, web-based OS (still about a year away from launch) has tapped the Open Source community to help. Interesting to point out the types of devices on which this will run .. except that the devices will appear by the 2010 holiday season.
According to the article:
Google's initial target with Chrome OS is netbooks with solid state drives that support only Web applications, he said. It's a narrow focus, but one that reflects the growing prevalence of cloud computing and Google's goal of offering users a simple, yet high performance experience.
.. which is an interesting play; a tiny market, especially with the preponderance of Netbook-sized, fully-featured laptops, like my Acer Aspire One. According to earlier articles, Google planned Chrome OS to run atop mobile internet devices (mobile phones) as well. That’s a bigger market, to be sure.
From a blog post by Google back in July (cited below):
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.
From today’s post:
All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.
Disconnected user? No options for installing what you really want to use? I’m sure there’s more to this.
In the news:
Will be an interesting year.