Introduction

Just about a day ago, Google announced that they are open sourcing the Chrome OS one year before its official release. This is so that they can work closely with the open source community to further improve the current Chrome OS as it is. In addition they went through several highlights of this new OS. In this article, I will review the highlights of the Chrome OS and talk about whether Chrome OS is really that amazing.

How the User Interface Looks

Google Chrome's UI

Click on the picture for a larger view. Your first reaction will definitely be, isn’t this Google Chrome Browser? Yes, we all had that reaction. During the announcement, the Google presenter shared an inside joke in Google that the Google Chrome OS is basically Google Chrome. To be very honest, I do feel that the Google Chrome OS user interface is definitely capable of giving Windows a run for its money. It might not have fancy aero-glass technology, but it makes up for it in terms of simplicity. It is very cliche, but simplicity is a form of beauty.

Google Chrome to Support Extensions

In the announcement, Google also said that the Chrome browswer (and obviously together with the Chrome OS), will be supporting extensions soon. This is basically the add-on support that you get in Mozilla Firefox. Now, I remember having a discussion with a few of my friends about the browsers we used, and we all agreed that Firefox is still the best still due to it’s superb use of add-ons. Need to download a video of youtube ? Just use an add-on to help you. Want to check the weather in your area? Use an add-on to do it. The current chrome has no supports for such third-party add-ons, and I think Google’s implementation of extensions is a giant step forward for Chrome. When their extensions are fairly well developed, we can probably expect Chrome to give Firefox a run for its money.

Speed

Google Chrome OS places a huge emphasis on speed according to the Google presenter. And I must say that I probably could believe that the Google Chrome OS will run at blazing speeds. Take a look at Google Chrome Browser and you know that Chrome is made to be swift. The difference in the start up time of Google Chrome compared to a Firefox browser with add-ons enabled is very significant. Most of the positive comments of the Chrome browser when it just came out was that it is very fast and light-weight. If Google Chrome OS is able to work at the same swift speed, I think this will cause a lot of users who use their laptops and netbooks heavily for work so switch over to Google Chrome OS for better efficiency. A live demonstration was done at the announcement, where it only took 7 seconds for the laptop to reach the Chrome OS login screen and a mere 3 seconds to get to the browser after you log in.

Living On A Cloud

Why is Google Chrome OS able to run at blazing speeds? This is because Google Chrome OS eliminates the need for any software and OS background services. This is in line with their vision of “living in a cloud”. Google believes that most people nowadays, spend their time on computers on the web, especially with things like Facebook, Myspace and Youtube becoming more and more integral parts of our lives. Hence, they believe everything on the computer can be done on a browser. And I would say that there is a significant number of users who can fall into this category. To give you an example of what it means to live on a cloud. The presenter plugged in a USB thumbdrive containing excel files and opened it. Less than a second later, the excel file is displayed in the Google Chrome Browswer, with the aid of a web-based version of Microsoft Office 2010. He then opened up an empty notepad file and type a couple of words into the empty notepad without saving it at all. Amazingly, when he went to his own google documents online, there is a notepad file with exactly what he wrote in that empty notepad file. Meaning, the moment you write something into notepad it is already out there on the web on your google documents. You can access it from another computer and you could still see what you typed on a notepad file on another computer. Amazing stuff.

Simplicity

Google OS also emphasizes on simplicity, and to achieve that, they totally bypassed the whole idea of software and services. There will be no installation of any software on the Google Chrome OS, and all extensions will be automatically kept updated by Google Chrome OS. Meaning the user no longer has a need to manually install applications they need one by one, and to people who are new to computers I reckon this is a great reason why they should start learning how to use a computer starting with Chrome OS. With no installation being allowed, the infamous Blue Screen Of Death problem of Windows can be largely avoided as the user is simply not allowed to install anything.

Windows Killer?

Nope. Definitely not in the short run. But why? All of the above reasons seem convincing enough for one to give Google Chrome OS a shot. However, during the presentation Google conveniently left out the weak points of an OS like Chrome. The reasons why Google Chrome OS cannot compete with Windows in the short run are as follows:

1. Web extensions and applications cannot possibly be allowed to tap into hardware resources like your graphic card etc. If this is allowed to happen, it makes it really easy for people to write malicious extensions that can abuse your hardware resources without you knowing. It is not technically possible to do things like trying to burn certain files onto a DVD with just a web application.
2. Internet becomes a MUST everywhere you go. You have an OS that is based on largely a browser, that spells doom for you when the wireless network in the area you are working from suddenly went out. You will be left with an obsolete piece of equipment that can hardly do anything now that you cannot go online. If you have a Windows laptop, you would probably be playing the latest game that you just installed on your laptop. If you have a Google Chrome OS, you really cannot be doing anything productive without the Internet.
3. Firefox have an established wide database of current add-ons for almost any purpose that you can think of. It will take a while and a lot of hard work for Google Chrome to get to the same standard, as there are still alot of web applications to be written, and this is why I say Google Chrome OS cannot possibly try and compete with Windows in the short run. In addition time has to be given for coders to learn the new language to code Google Chrome OS extensions. That adds on to the time needed to built a decent database of extensions for Chrome OS
4. Video Gamers will be anti-Chrome-OS. There is no installation of any software allowed and the fact that you cannot tap into your graphic card simply means you can have fun playing flash applets for entertainment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, what Google announced is very promising, but to see if it has the potential to beat Microsoft is something that cannot be decided upon until we see the final release of the Google Chrome OS. At the moment, I do not see Google Chrome being a very big threat to Microsoft. If you are interested in the whole announcement, the video below is the full length coverage of the whole announcement.