Google Evolves From Beta – Also Announces Chrome OS – A Microsoft Windows Competitor?
Google has been well known for its beta obsession as most of its apps were under the beta tag. But not anymore as google announced yesterday that starting today it would be removing the beta tag accross its Google apps like gmail, calendar, docs etc across consumer and enterprise versions.
Why Evolution from Beta is significant?
The very fact that google has let go of the beta tag means that its ready to claim that its products are ready to be considered stable and can be offered on a freemium model. This move is clearly targetted at the business community and to send a message out that Google apps can now be considered as a serious investment.
While Google has moved on from BETA Stage in terms of web apps it also made a significant announcement a few hours ago i.e. the announcement of the Web OS platform christened Google Chrome OS. In their own words “Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.”
Even before any sign of even a screeshot of the OS blogs like techcrunch are hailing this product as a nuclear bomb from google to destroy microsoft.
Here are some revelations on Google Chrome OS
- Its an open source, lightweight operating system targeted at netbooks
- Later this year its code will be open-source
- By the second half of 2010 it will be available bundled with netbooks
- Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS
- OS to be built in a way to protect it from viruses, malware and security updates
- Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips
- Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android
As its clear from the points above Google intends to hurt microsoft where it hurts the most i.e. Speed and security. They are making this browser for a web savvy early adopter who hates it when his or her machine get hung due to several OS processes which may not be required for his real requirement i.e. browsing the web.
Is this a huge threat to Microsoft Windows?
Well in the short term not that big a threat but in the longterm as cloud computing becomes a reality and speed and security is preferred over features then Microsoft would be very wary of this new competitor. What would serve Microsoft well would be if it can launch a Lite version of Microsoft Windows 7 targetted at the audience focussed on browsing and an option to switch to this Lite version from the main Windows 7 OS itself. Think of it like a web browsing mode just like safe mode on your current PC. All in all this is a BIG announcement by Google and the battle between Google and Microsoft just got even more interesting.
Addition (by Siddarth) : Google’s not the only one seeing the potential of a browser cum OS. Microsoft’s Gazelle’s not made the news in a very big way, but it’s definitely in the pipes. To quote Microsoft from it’s research site, Microsoft Researcher Helen Wang said “We’re really trying to leverage the decades of operating system experience and apply that in the Web and browser setting”. The entire news article (recent one) is here, and the original Microsoft Research article is here and an article citing the latest work on Gazelle is here aptly titled, “When is a browser NOT a browser?” Gazelle will hopefully see Microsoft moving a little from it’s tried-and-tested status quo approach to development. Note, Microsoft is careful enough to keep announcing that Gazelle is not a replacement for Windows or IE (in case it appears like Microsoft has realised that both these will not be viable as per future market requirements) and that Gazelle is merely “just something we’re working on”. The future of computer-experience being re-envisioned?
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There are some screenshots on google’s site for gOS that seem to be available check it out at: http://digg.com/d1w35r
The question is ultimately, what kind of application support will really be there? Not to mention driver base. My biggest fear is that while netbook’s and their scaled down OS’s are terrific, it does not really help me to get a presentation done, play a new video game, or work any other number of higher end function applications. I really like Google, and their model is great. However I need something for allot more functionality and I highly doubt that it will be adoped by big business anytime soon. In summary, I know I will play with it, but it looks more like a toy then an actual powerful os concept.
@panther – Agreed. We will have to wait and watch!