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 is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. 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. It should just work.
Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
Quick. Someone send a truckload of Tums over to Redmond.
Thanks, Mr. Justin
Oh how I wish Google would lend their expertise, money, and wisdom to Open Office, Mozilla, and Linux. While competition is always good, the Open Source community has already done most of what Google is doing.
Create what the users want, not what the profit makers seek.
Just what we need, another Linux distro…
Since I work as a photographer for a living, my only reason to cling to XP would be Lightroom. Otherwise, as Chrome is currently my browser and I am quite happy with it, Chrome as an OS seems promising for me.
Every time someone does a Linux distro somebody claims its going to take over everything else. We have yet to see this happen. I am not sure Google on it is going to make much of a difference. One thing for certain is that Google has the money to market it properly which has been the downfall of Linux in general. So far Netbooks have mostly had Windows on them and I do not see this changing now that Windows 7 is soon to be out. For most consumers who have been computing for a while it is hard to teach a old dog a new OS. Apple has had the most success and will probably continue to have success. I still am scratching my head as to why we should give Google any more credit then say Ubuntu for taking already available code and putting their own spin on it? To me its just Linux.
Hold the tums…until I can get a copy (beta, RC, or otherwise) I’ll keep it in the catagory of vaporware!
Not that I doubt Google will ship the OS, I just thing that with the 2nd half of 2010 being a *year* away. 🙂
Good time for Google to get the maximum mileage out of PR/FUD. 🙂
Odd that they did not call it Android
I was expecting Android. This is better.
The distro is not Linux, the distro is Chrome, Search, GMail, Docs, etc.
The development platform is Google App Engine, GWT, Wave, Google API’s, Gears, and HTML 5.
The carriers, coverage, and data plans are the limiting factor.
This isn’t going to work. In particular the bit about ‘For application developers, the web is the platform’. Oh really?
I can use all of those ‘great’ web platforms. So my disk backup solution is going to be written in php.. somehow…? Or my performance application (say 3d game) is going to be written in Java… Right. And all of those millions and millions of lines of C++ and C, well I can’t use any of that.
Sometimes you need software on your client. Because it needs direct access to the resources there, or for performance reasons.
There are also security reasons (perhaps I don’t want my data available ‘on the web’).
I would also note that the ‘web platform’ – php, perl, java has some of the most hideous, development environments. Debugging anyone?
For netbook – browsing, email etc, then that might be fine. But we have that now with unix + browser.
I guess the way they seem to be avoiding the ‘unix’ part (ie the actual OS) is kind of amusing.
So it can probably be best seen as a rebranding of unix – that google is now claiming is mainstream usable (and for netbook usage – arguably it is).
#7, What are you talking about? It says right in the announcement that its a distro of linux with a new windowing system. Whoop-de-freaking-do
Microsoft announced today they are renaming Windows 7 to Windows Gold (everyone knows Gold is better than Chrome)
Excellent! For the longest time Microsoft’s products have been looking like, well, rust!
Wow another UNIX based OS.
So can anyone tell me… is it REALLY that hard to come up with an entirely NEW OS without either having to rape some 30+ year old thing of the past?
Is it? Or are they all effin lazy?
Cursor_
Oh good, another platform that people will have to develop for. So much for interoperability.
@ 12
Writing the OS isn’t that hard. The low level part at least. Back in the day I wrote a complete replacement OS for ST/Amiga in my spare time, in a few months. Things are more complicated now with PCs but not dramatically so.
The issue is all of the software sitting on top of it. For your new OS – if it has a different API then all the app developers (and all of the pre-existing software/utils) either need to have lots of code changed to fit your API, or have a layer which makes your OS have the same API.
In the second case you could argue there are many different operating systems – created from scratch, fairly rapidly, all with the same API (unix).
If I was to create a new OS, however it worked and its core API – I would certainly give it a unix API layer.
WOW – and not a single government mandate telling the industry what they have to do…and yet, someone steps up to build a better ‘mouse-trap’!
What a great country we live in where things like this are allowed to happen…..EVERY DAY!
I love the smell of antitrust in the morning.
#15
Actually nothing happened. Unless you mean PR happened.
hhhmmm we are repackaging linux in shine cropme plating and putting all your data on there web where it is ours!!! muhahahahahah!
sorry i’ll pass, i want my data on my system in my control…
good day…
is it REALLY that hard to come up with an entirely NEW OS without either having to rape some 30+ year old thing of the past?
I don’t know as I’m not a programmer. However, I would guess that the answer would be “Why reinvent the wheel?”
Linux is already there. It performs quite well. It has tons of apps already running on it so when they launch they won’t have an operating system without apps. Google seems to be trying to do the same thing Apple did: take an existing backend and write their own stuff on top of it.
There are some operating systems built from scratch but they are pretty niche (of course they don’t have the money of a company like google behind them either)
#12 “So can anyone tell me… is it REALLY that hard to come up with an entirely NEW OS without either having to rape some 30+ year old thing of the past?
Is it? Or are they all effin lazy?”
Windows NT was developed in-house at
Microsoft in the 1988-93 timeframe, and their modern desktop and server OS’s are all based on it.
Pretty much everything else out there is Unix based, and even Windows NT was designed to be Unix-like. If it aint broke don’t fix it.
20 Somebody_Else,
Allow me to introduce your to the Unix haters handbook… Great read!
PDF Warning!
http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf
12 Cursor_
One thing MS did, that made them numero-uno is recognize developers. They really managed to create and entire, global market of programmers. And that’s why they’re king. BeOS was an awesome OS. Completely modern. No developers / apps = no traction.
Google just announced and OS that isn’t an OS. That’s what happened. You boot into the browser and that’s it. This OS can only run the browser and that is it.
If you don’t have an internet connection up and running you can’t do anything what so ever at least as stated.
This means that you can not use a machine running this OS to do work on a plane, train, or as the passenger in a car unless you have some kind of internet connection. At present even if you have a cellphone connection built in that is going to be a major pain in the butt and it still isn’t going to work on most planes. Trying to use this thing internationally would cost staggering amounts of money as would the cell phone connection even inside the states.
That’s why even smartphones can bleeping well run an application off line!
Chrome supports some sort of advanced feature set that means you don’t need java or plug ins to write applications for it if my memory is right. I think the only major browser that doesn’t is IE if that matters though I don’t have a clue how well it’s actually implemented in any of them.
Eideard said, “Quick. Someone send a truckload of Tums over to Redmond.”
Umm, why? Because yet another flavor of nix is being marketed?
This is suprisingly reminiscent of the first generation iPhone, where Apple said, “You don’t need local apps, you can just write web apps. They’re awesome!” The people using the phone thought differently.
Luckily, since Chrome OS will be opened source, someone will instantly fork it and provide you the ability to install apps for whatever the underlying distribution actually is.
#22 “If you don’t have an internet connection up and running you can’t do anything what so ever at least as stated.”
I’m sure you can store applications and data locally, it is still a linux distro after all. The major feature is that Chrome is apparently the means of running applications, regardless of whether they’re local or web based.
They said you will have to buy it.
# 25 Somebody_Else said, “The major feature is that Chrome is apparently the means of running applications, regardless of whether they’re local or web based.”
LOL! Really? Talk about a security problem.
Cloud computing will always be a non-starter for me.
The surprising thing is that it took them so long. Dvorak has been urging them to do it and predicting they would for years.
I have always thought Linux could become a consumer OS if some large company with some design chops and a big, BIG marketing budget came out with a nice version with lots of design extras and kept tight control to prevent insane forking. Substitute BSD and you have Apple’s OS X, and that’s working out pretty well for them.
My main question is about the millions of media codecs — will these devices be able to play MP3s, MP4s, DivX, XVid, QuickTime, WMV, WMA, AVI, OggVorbis, WAV, FLAC, AAC, Real, Flash, Silverlight, PDF, M3U, H.264, M4V, MTV, VOB… There are about a thousand more, it seems. That will take a dedicated and talented team. If they even come close, I’ll be impressed.
Ahh to develop in a controlled OS for against a single browser. Hmmmm
Why do these browser/search engine wars remind me of the cold war conflicts of Afghanistan/Viet Nam between the super powers?
I agree with #21 the development support MS has MSDN/MVC/Forums development Community is bar none. Java is too spread out and not consistent in direction and does not provide the development support.
If you want an OS to surf the internet, this is the choice. If you want to do real work..don’t hold your breath unless you want to buy Google’s products to install first.