Taking aim at Microsoft in its most dominant market, Google announced that it is developing its own computer operating system based on its Chrome Web browser. Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks, which are small, compact, low cost and extremely popular sub-notebooks. This announcement from the official Google blog post is a clear departure from years of denying any interest in challenging Microsoft or Apple in the computer operating systems market. Both Microsoft and Apple have announced plans to release new operating systems in 2009.
Google’s plan further intensifies the rivalry that it has with Microsoft in the Web search (Google v Bing), browsers and business applications market that includes word processing and spreadsheets. Google is currently meeting with hardware manufacturers and plans to have it available by the second half of 2010.
In the official Google blog post, Sundar Pichai, vice president of Product Management stated,” We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the Web — searching for information, checking e-mail, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”
Google Chrome OS will focus on “speed, simplicity and security”, said Pichai. “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. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.”
This is consistent with Google’s push to get more users online to drive demand for Internet ads which accounted for close to 90% of Google’s revenue in 2008. As more and more companies are looking to do more with less, the open source Chrome OS should gain favor with companies not wanting to spend money with Microsoft, as they look for ways to cut costs.
Having a company with Google’s stature and over 30 million people who regularly use the Google Chrome browser should create credibility for this new OS. Will Google’s Chrome OS live up to the promise and hype or will it have a similar fate as Microsoft’s Vista? Will Google dominate the netbook market with this release? Will we see new innovation with this announcement from Microsoft, Apple and Google? Will this push Microsoft to deliver significant enhancements in Explorer 7?
Share with us your thoughts on Google’s announcement of entering the OS market. What system is there greater anticipation for- Explorer 7 or Chrome OS? What features are you hoping get addressed with these new releases? How will these releases impact your organization? Will you be an early adopter or wait for others to find all of the bugs before you jump on board?
