Last week Google announced that they would be releasing an operating system at some point next year. Of course the media went crazy over it, saying that now Google was stepping into Microsoft’s operating system arena. But they are not. Google is creating something totally different from windows. Yes it is an operating system but it is going to be a cloud operating system specializing in web applications and extremely light weight use. But just because it is not made to directly compete with Microsoft’s current Windows OS doesn’t mean Microsoft won’t be worried/pissed about it. Because they probably wanted to sell something similar down the line and now Google is going to give it away for free. But that’s neither here nor there. I, personally, would have absolutely no use for that piece of crud. People who use their computer solely for reading Facebook, posting on twitter, typing essays, and sending emails though, would have a use for such an operating system.
I really don’t understand what the big deal is. Google’s Chrome OS will probably be a flop. In the past all of Google’s forays into sources of business other than search and ads have pretty much failed. One example is the Android OS. So far it has very limited usage its heavily overshadowed by the iPhone and now it has Palm’s WebOS to deal with also. And other things like Google Apps and all the random things that they have come out with in recent years definitely have not been cash cows. I am actually wondering how many new and pointless services will be coming from Google’s campus as this recession continues (hopefully it ends soon though). Google Wave I believe is due at the end of the year we’ll see how that does…
Google’s Chrome OS is cool, I guess, for people who are into low powered computing. But it has gotten me thinking even about my current computer and online storage usage. I think that I am already too jacked into Google. I use one Gmail account for all of my mail. I have probably six other accounts going into this one Gmail account. What does this mean? Whenever I get an email Google gets a chance to examine it and use it to learn about what I am doing and then sell ads to me more efficiently. Granted I never click on Adwords ads but but the point is that Google sees all of my data and mines it for information about me. The Chrome OS would be one thousand times worse! I bet some people would save the entire contents of their My Documents folder up on the “cloud” so that they would have access to it everywhere. But the user is not the only person with access to all that data. Google has access, Google’s employees have access, any crazy computer hacker could get access. Just like the damn hackers got my Social Security number out of UCLA’s database they could get info out of Google.
The announcement about this Chrome OS really has me thinking about how I have been using my computer recently. And I have been way to dependant on Google. I think it is back to Outlook for me because I don’t want anyone data-mining my private and/or business emails.
Oh and one last thing! all of the benefits of the “cloud” can be achieved with some minor tweaking of Windows, Linux, or even OS X. All you need to do is set up and ftp server(IIS and Apache can do this). You can share whatever you want to share and password protect it so that only you can get to it. You could even create new accounts on your computer so that others could log in and have access. You could also set up your entire hard drive to be the shared area for the FTP server (although I wouldn’t recommend it). But then I guess you wouldn’t have the collaboration benefits but at least nobody would be searching through your data and trying to sell crap to you. If you need collaboration use Google chat or something else. Personally, I use Pidgin. Pidgin is an open source instant messaging application that supports a plethora of chatting standards. You should check it out. The main benefit of this is that YOU are in control of your data. It is local to your computer and nobody will get to it except the people you want, and probably hackers. Provided that they know about you and you have something they want.
In conclusion, the Google Chrome browser is great, the Google Chrome OS will not be great, for me at least. I need the power! It seems like Google has its hands on the lid of Pandora’s box and is about to open it. And no I am not talking about online music streaming.
Peace out ya’ll. I’ve got a test to take.