The Huge Letdown Of Google Chrome OS

On July 7th of this year Google announced their entrance into the desktop operating system fray with the forthcoming Google Chrome OS. Details were blurry, but we were told that it would utilize the linux kernel and a new windowing system.

The use of linux in and of itself was not a cause for alarm. The linux kernel does have a lot of functionality and hardware support. Linux isn’t intrinsically slow and resource intensive, as the linux distros of yesteryear brought very snappy performance to hardware that was less than bleeding edge. Linux has accumulated its share of bloat over the years, and the average linux distro is no longer as swift or as light as it once was.

Nevertheless, the use of a linux kernel didn’t automatically mean that Chrome OS would be nothing but a Google-ized linux distro. The promise of a proprietary windowing system would allow them to do away with a windowing system that carried 20 years worth of baggage, and while it would also mean that you wouldn’t be running Xwindows apps on Chrome OS, that was actually a move in the right direction. Google Chrome OS should be an operating system that utilized linux technology but stood on its own merits. There is precedence for this; Mac OS X uses a big chunk of the FreeBSD userland for its unix underlayer. Mac OS X is no more FreeBSD than Chrome OS will be linux.

So the thought of a lightweight, webcentric operating system that provided a platform for Google’s web browser and online apps held quite a bit of promise. As a guy with a laptop that is getting a little gray at the temples, such a system would be attractive because said operating system should be pretty thrifty with hardware resources.

Google already has Android OS, an operating system for handheld devices and netbooks. Android OS also uses the linux kernel and a proprietary windowing system. I can tell you from firsthand experience that Android OS is very much the thing for phones and tablets, and I expect an explosion of Android devices in 2010.

So, again, Google is a smart company filled with smart people, and they already got this right once. Hopes for Chrome were very high indeed.

Well today is the day we got a limited peek at what they’ve done so far. As someone who was looking forward to this day, I have to tell you that I am very disappointed with what Google showed us.

Google Chrome OS Intro Video

Google Chrome OS Demonstration

So basically what Google’s operating system amounts to is a minimalist framework to launch and use the Google Chrome web browser. We thought the OS would be heavily dependent on Chrome, it just turns out that the OS is Chrome.

The only real use I can see for a system like this is for public terminals, which if you haven’t noticed, don’t really exist anywhere at this time.

I suppose the guys at Google working on Chrome OS should be applauded for figuring out how to make a web browser into an operating system. I am sure that Chrome OS is not without merit and under closer inspection I am sure there are some pretty good ideas rolled into Chrome OS. I just don’t see any of us abandoning the systems we currently use to apply the handcuffs that such a system would impose on our usage.

Read Related Posts

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5. Google Chrome OS Poll: Could You Survive With A Webcentric OS?

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