In a move seen to put in direct competition with its biggest rival, Microsoft, Google has announced the creation of a new open-source operating system.
The new system is called Chrome OS and is intended to be “lightweight, quick-starting operating system” according to Wired. The central focus of the system will be supporting the Google Chrome browser, which will run most of the applications. The move wiill make the web browser the computer’s default operating system as opposed to the desktop scheme currently used by Microsoft.
The Linux-based OS is the second for Google, following on Android, another open-source OS that intended for small devices such as mobile phones. Chrome OS will first be on netbooks — the popular lightweight and inexpensive notebook computers — in the second half of 2010, the company said in a blog post. Desktops will come later.
“People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them,” Google said in a statement. “Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”
Google has already worked to compete with Microsoft in offering several other web-based applications from the popular gmail to spreadsheets and word processing. The annoucement of Chrome is the next step in giving Microsoft even greater competition.
Must…Not…Give…Into…Google….
BUT IT’S SO SHINY!
I got mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, anything that threatens to cripple the 800 lb. gorilla that is Microsoft should be applauded. On the other hand, Google is on track to be the 16 Ton gorilla!
This is hell for gamers. If you want to play games, you need Microsoft, or an emulator, which might not work right for the games you want to play. Personaly I would love to switch to Linux, and even this new Google OS, which WILL be very nice, but then I can’t play my games anymore, at least not as well….
Though if I’m wrong, please feel free to let me know!
I’m sort of hesitant to give yet more of my life over to Google. (I swear, I can’t remember what I’m doing more than two days ahead without my Google calendar. It’s pretty sad.) But if they can build a less cumbersome OS than Microsoft, I’ll at least give it a look. Probably won’t be available to me anytime soon, anyway. I only have a desktop.
I think everyone is wary of how much of our lives we are giving to google. The problem is they do pretty much everything a billion times better than microsoft.