Google Chrome for Netbooks
Google have been throwing their weight around a bit this week talking about "Netbooks". Among other things, their VP of Product Management (Sundar Pichai) has been speaking about how netbooks will work together with Chrome (Google’s browser) & Chrome OS (their operating system).
Here are the most interesting bits:
1. A Year
That’s how long it’s likely to be before we see Chrome OS based netbooks. This is slightly surprising, as Google are usually *really* quick to market as soon as they start speaking about something.
2. Bigger
Bigger keyboards, bigger screens. Those are the hints at what Google wants to see in netbooks. And they’re putting together guidelines for the technology manufacturers should adhere to if they want to ship Chrome netbooks.
3. Wi-Fi
WiFi is at the absolute heart of the Chrome OS idea. If you’ve delved into it at all, you start to think "hang on, this whole Chrome OS business is basically just an operating system that runs… a browser". Sure there will be other apps developed, but in the main, Chrome OS is a browser, and all of the apps run - as Google Apps does – on the server side. What that means is you *have* to have a decent internet connection at all times to use these to any extent. Which leads us on to.
4. Mobile
It looks like the plan is to work with mobile networks & ship out Chrome Netbooks tied to a long-term mobile data package. Does this mean the netbooks will be free & pay for themselves through ads? Time will tell.
5. History Repeating
As we know, many early netbooks were based on Ubuntu and other linux/unix operating systems. This quickly died in favour of Windows XP Home (and now Windows 7 Starter). It looks like Google think they can do the ‘linux’ model & do it better. They quote 3,000 businesses moving to Google Apps (presumably away from Windows), so you can bet Microsoft will have something to say about all this.
