Comments on: The World Just Changed

By: Danny

Danny — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:39:03 +0000

>You know the ones who have machines 3 or so years old >filling their offices? This will have an effect on those >decisions.

No it won’t. At all. Google has barely managed to dent the market with a similar project in the mobile phone space and now they are winning over IT departments? Geez this might be the most overblown post in all of chrome os blogging. Quite an achievement. Any IT manager who is going to be putting a brand new OS with no proven device or app support into wide scale rollout is not going to be an IT manager for long. We have almost no real world details about this project and suddenly it is making its way through the long-term planning of the corporate approval process? Just hilarious. Whoa what utter nonsense. Even google would have to admit you’ve wildly overshot expectations. Seriously, take a breath.

By: Virtuous

Virtuous — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:04:23 +0000

I love Gmail, Calendar and Picasa, but not Android. Android will have the same problem as Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile is on too many different screen sizes and models. This makes writting apps that will work on all models challenging.

By: Paul Harrigan

Paul Harrigan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:17:49 +0000

Contrary to Jake’s “assurances”, the world has changed. Linux failed on netbooks because it didn’t run anything. Android is just getting started, although I suspect it faces a very different competitor in the Iphone than in the world in which it first was developed.

Chrome OS is precisely what Microsoft feared in the early 80′s when one of the Netscape founders said Netscape could be used as an OS to replace Windows — leading to the conduct that got MS in trouble with the antitrust laws.

At its heart, however, this is not a new battle, just a powerful competitor in the old battle of whether my data is kept locally and my computing is under my local control or whether a server (now called the cloud, since we don’t get to see where the server is) has the data and I have some sort of client.

I think it is going to be an interesting time, and I suspect that Microsoft is going to need to respond rather more vigorously than it has recently, or else it is going to be in real trouble.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:03:51 +0000

I can assure you that nothing has changed and the title of this thread is the equivalent of proclaiming 2009 the year of Linux.

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that people will be interested in a Google OS and no reason to think that people will flock to Google apps that are relatively untested and thoroughly untrusted. Google have excelled at search but little else and there’s far more risk involved with handing all your information over to Google than any other company at this stage.

If you want to see how a Google OS will fair I suggest you check out that state of Android in the Smartphone market and Linux in general in the Netbook market. Neither is a success and the latter can be counted as a dismal failure given the fact that netbooks started out on Linux.

By: Tim H

Tim H — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:44:14 +0000

I agree with Sumocat about the reality of its date of availability. I also agree with NotSoSure about what it will really turn out to be. The big question in my mind is that of drivers. Could it work with the hardware in my flavor of netbook? Linux has this problem, and so does Windows 7RC.

By: Mark (K0LO)

Mark (K0LO) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:45:35 +0000

Funny how perceptions change. I was just reading the comments to today’s NYT article about Chrome OS:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/would-you-miss-windows-with-a-google-operating-system/?partner=rss&emc=rss

A couple of years ago, Microsoft was considered the “Evil Empire” and Google was considered to be Knights in Shining Armor. Go read the comments in the above article. Most of them are extremely suspicious of and distrustful of Google. So now they have the perception problem to deal with…

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:08:55 +0000

don’t get the hype. It’s a OS, nice, there are many free and open operating systems out there. What does Google OS has what others don’t have?
I also don’t expect compatibilty with Windows software which was the great success of netbooks: small, portable, cheap but still capable of running full Windows XP, and not a Linux version, Windows CE or whatever with other unknown programs.

And sorry, but Google is a huge company, too huge for my taste with too strange terms and conditions. I won’t want a Google OS on my machine. Google search, mail, browser, phone os, pc os, …, that’s too much power which I don’t want to support.

By: NotSoSure

NotSoSure — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:03:30 +0000

Hi, while I agree that this is big I do not think it is automatically as BIG as it is made out to be. This is just another tiny OS (nothing to do with the OS bearing that name) that uses a stripped down version of a Linux kernel. Time will tell but this is by means the beginning of the end for either Apple OS or Windows (or Linux or any other).

By: Sumocat

Sumocat — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:59:59 +0000

Jim: Don’t put the cart before the horse. Per the announcement, they’re going to open source the code later this year with consumer products planned for later next year. Unless you know something we don’t, I wouldn’t count on a workable OS by this fall.

As for the world changing, as Yoda would say, begun the OS war has.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:55:23 +0000

Ah, so THAT’s why google chose red, yellow, blue and green for their chrome logo like that. they planned to make it into and OS the whole time, and had to choose colors similar to the windows logo. i see, i see.

(joke in response to Rob’s post: http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/05/18/im-just-asking/ )

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:28:10 +0000

This changes everything. This fall I’ll have to dual-boot Windows 7 RC and Google Chrome OS.