Google’s planned operating system for Chrome should “just work”. That’s the claim by Sundar Pichai, Google’s Vice President of Product Management in the official blog post announcing the OS today.
Having suffered the Windows Blue Screen of Death many times, the idea of a fail free OS is seductive, but ultimately unrealistic. Given this is Google’s first foray into the OS territory, it’s bound to be a bumpy ride and I’m guessing there will be numerous buggy releases for developers to bitch about before a truly useful version is sprung on the public. Chrome Screen of Death anyone?
This hasn’t stopped the predictable comparisons being made with Windows Vista and the naive speculation that Google’s Chrome OS could be a Windows Killer. Ha! If only it were as simple as building an operating system that just works. If it was as easy as that, Linux would have killed Windows years ago.
What’s more interesting than whether it will just work is the response to the news on social networks. Within a couple of hours of Google’s announcement, *Google Chrome OS* was the #1 trending topic on Twitter. People came up with numerous amusing hashtags about the OS, including #WillitKillWindows and my personal fav #allyourpcsbelongtous.
The Google Chrome Operating System will be available to web developers later this year and potentially available to consumers in the second half of 2010.
You can read more about the so called Just Work OS on my blog at SiteProNews: Google Announces their own Operating System and in Danny Sullivan’s post The Google Operating System is Real.
Fail. Google Chrome OS is not a new operating system written from scratch. It uses very mature, robust and fast operating system called Linux, and adds only applications on top of it.
What about killing Windows? That’s not about technical aspects at all. If it was, nobody used Windows XP/Vista, which is ancient and not usable when compared to most of it’s competitors like OS X or Ubuntu. Apple’s OS X is (very slowly) “killing” Windows, since they really know how to do marketing and have enough bucks for that too.
Still Google is even more bigger fish than Apple. Only sky is limit when Google really starts the marketing of new shiny netbooks and integrated desktop systems on 2010. I think Google is now either biggest or at least among the biggest marketing channels. You should really consider this.
And even if “killing” Windows was a technical question, you should really try Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Search, Gmail, Picasa and others and then compare to their ancient and ugly counter pairs made by MS. You should really see the difference.
if it’s a windowing system built on linux that ‘just works’ the obvious comparison is OS X, not Vista. OS X being a windowing system built on BSD that ‘just works’, after all.
Why don’t Google just partner with Ubuntu one of the most popular distros.
Regarding my earlier comment, I have seen reports speculating that Chrome OS IS a fork of Ubuntu
I find the ““Google’s Chrome OS Should “Just Work”” rather amusing; it gives the impression that it might work, or barely works!
Anybody else get that idea, or is it just cynical me?!!!
I have tried Chrome, but not over-impressed really. Who am I to criticize!!!
If it is a fork of Ubuntu It should just work, as mine did (compared to windows)
IF it’s a fork of Ubuntu it will just work, as all my Ubuntu installations just work, BUT, Chrome OS won’t be “just-another-ubuntu-fork” like IE. Mint, but will have totally new windowing system and all the things over it.
So even if it’s a fork of Ubuntu, it maybe isn’t similar or compatible with Ubuntu and other typical Linux distros.
gOS was/is in fact for of Ubuntu, and it’s rumoured to be sponsored by Google. Still gOS didn’t “just work” even when Ubuntu “just works”.