First, let it be clear that nobody has seen Google's Chrome OS, which the search giant announced Tuesday night. There have been no performance benchmarks, usability evaluations, nothing. In a vacuum like that, people have a tendency to project their hopes or biases or suspicions into what a product or technology will likely be.
Google Chrome OS could wind up being a perfectly great piece of software. On its corporate blog last night, Sundar Pichai, a vice president of Product Management and Engineering Director at Google, wrote:
"We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web."
Sounds like the latest version of Ubuntu, or iPhone 3.0.
Google is targeting the netbook space with Google Chrome OS, as it did fostering the Android OS to target the handheld space. Android has been out on the market for several months and, while its users do like it, it hasn't exactly been setting the world on fire. And while netbooks came on like gangbusters in late 2007 and the first half of 2008, it's unclear if they can maintain any kind of momentum as smart phones get more and more powerful and as full-blown notebooks become less and less expensive.
The key elements of Chrome OS are security, simplicity and speed, Pichai says. We'll wait to see about memory requirements, driver support, application support, battery life and all the messy details that have kept the folks at Microsoft, Apple and the Linux developers around the world up nights. How much support will Google provide? Or will it leave it to the open source community?
The further Google gets away from its core search business, the more difficult it may be for it to focus on those details. And if Google doesn't quite believe it, the folks there need only look at how successful Microsoft has been the further it's gotten away from its core operating system business.
