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How To Respond to Google Chrome OS

UPDATE: Fixed 'Response' to 'Respond' in title. Sorry about that.

We all have to do it, so I might as well take my turn.

First impression: no surprise here.

There are expectations in two forms here. We can expect certain things to come of this and we can expect certain things to disappoint us about this. There is a third, external expectation that techies will divide into a camp of people who think its Rilly, Rilly Important and a camp who thinks you're all wasting your time. I mean, gosh, its almost like this is exactly like any other topic we split down some arbitrary middle about. Get over it.

I Expect To Like:
  • Cheaper netbooks
  • Installing Chrome OS on old hardware
I Expect To Dislike:
  • Feeling like I have an OS that won't let me install anything but a browser
  • Not being able to install Android Apps
  • Not being able to run real Chrome on Android
  • Having no way to persist the state of a Javascript VM, so that I can close applications or save memory on long running ones and resume my work later
  • Still not being able to sync my bookmarks and open tabs and page states properly (or at all) so that applications that are just websites can easily move from my little netbook to my desktop
  • Not getting Android on netbooks, because Chrome OS gets pushed, instead
I Expect To Be Let Down About:
  • Getting Chrome OS on Tegra hardware with O3D
  • Google doing a funny video in time square asking What is an operating system?
  • Never having Google Notebook on a Google Netbook
My lack of pros in these lists that have anything to do with Chrome OS itself are not lost on me. I'm actually excited about it. I think its a really good thing. The availability of this certainly quality project will do great things for our perception of the web, the price points of netbooks, and Christmas in a down economy. The thing is, Chrome OS, at least initially, will be great for what it is not, rather than what it is.

Comments

Unknown said…
Hey dude,

As Eric just said there are a lot of commonalities between Chrome and Google’s mobile operating system, Android. “Although it appears they are two separate projects, there’s a great deal of commonality,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Eventually they may merge even closer.” ;)

The smarter choice for sure won't be to keep two different kernels/browsers and etc... ;)

Cheers.
Hugh said…
Since everyone keeps thinking that Android will never get the Google Chrome browser.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/confirmed_chrome_is_coming_to_android.php

^Here's a link to prove everyone wrong.
Calvin Spealman said…
I never thought we wouldn't see Chrome on Android, just that the timelines are strange for it not to have been the first move. They wasted a lot of resources getting the Android Browser built just to throw it away.
Unknown said…
Android Browser is pratically WebKit (Safari/KHTML). So Chrome without V8 Javascript and process manager :P. As we will have Chrome for Linux in a couple of months (maybe less), we will have for Android too. :)

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