Today, as I opened my FriendFeed, I was astonished as I read, via Rob Diana, the announcement that Google will build a “Chrome OS”, geared initially to netbook users who mostly run web applications.
If you read through the official press release and skip over the marketing parts of it, you’ll come to a paragraph that sums it up for me:
While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.
Why does Google need to offer two Operating Systems? Why not make an Android “light” and a full Android.
There might be technical reasons that make sense for them having two, but here I’m thinking about the users; most of them don’t even know what OS means, and to compete with Apple and Microsoft, you should really put your full force behind one project and not dilute yourself in two.
Chrome is already gaining acceptance as a browser. If you want to upgrade it to something, I’d say keep it as a client running on top of something else. But introducing another OS when Android is still struggling sounds like a bad idea.
Louis Gray and ReadWriteWeb talk about the new OS as well. Sarah Perez and The Apple Blog talk about it as well.
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Jorge, sorry but the crapPhone OS can’t even compete with the free Android. Android is so much better in any way. I see this totally different from you. We live on different worlds I think. And I don’t know what Androis has to do with Chrome OS. Android is doing very well. I don’t know if Chrome OS will be as successful as Android, but why not making an OS as an alternative for web-oriented users? As soon as netbooks comes out with Google OS preinstalled, many "normal users" won’t even notice what system will be on, because they don’t care.
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Sorry, Ryo, it’s obvious you haven’t read the post or the thread.
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Jorge, I did. Especially the first comment from you right after the post… sorry, with all respect, what you say about Android and Chrome is simply not true. Let’s see how things are in 3 years.
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Ryo, sounds like you’re just trolling my thread. You, yourself, say exactly what I’m describing in my post in your own thread: "It’s strange nonetheless, why they rename Android for desktops. Maybe to make a cut between mobile apps and desktop apps. But there is an overlap, which is very disturbing" http://friendfeed.com/googlebits/85112c54/google-announces-chrome-os-coming-to-netbooks
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An OS manages low-level things that bring life to the hardware. It manages how
process are run, how memory is allocated, how files are stored, network
operations… it’s the minimal set of programs that make the machine “operate”.
OpenOffice, firefox, the gimp, or even more basic tools like bash, sed, awk…
are not the real “OS”, since no application and no user “depend” on them.
So, could this Chrome OS actually be called an OS? IMHO, it is not.
If Chrome is built with a Linux kernel, I wouldn’t call it
an OS but a “distribution”. Just as you’d call Debian, Fedora, Suse, or Ubuntu
distributions of the *same* OS i.e. GNU/Linux.
Will Chrome OS hurt Linux? Absolutelly NOT. Maybe some Linux vendors will be
“affraid” (Canonical I’m looking at you), but the general Linux user will, IMHO,
welcome initiatives -every initiative- that will promote Linux and the
opensource community.
Will Chrome OS hurt Google? I don’t think so. I bet they’ll find a way to
generate profit out of their investments :)
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Jorge, sorry if you feel like that. But it’s the "struggling Android" which is simply a stupid, ignorant expression. And I thnk your conclusion is wrong. I think it is disturbing, and there is an overlap of Chrome OS. But you now, as we talk, Chrome OS is discussed everywhere. I don’t think it was a bad move from Google to bring out Chrome OS…just the name. But that won’t hurt much in the end I guess. Short, your post sound like you’re just hating Google and Android…
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Jorge, sorry if you feel like that. But it’s the "struggling Android" which is simply an ignorant expression. And I think your conclusion is wrong. I think it is disturbing, and there is an overlap of Chrome OS. But you now, as we talk, Chrome OS is discussed everywhere. I don’t think it was a bad move from Google to bring out Chrome OS…just the name. But that won’t hurt much in the end I guess. Short, your post sound like you’re just hating Google and Android…
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Liked “Google Has Done Bad Moves in the Past. Chrome OS is One of Them. – Thoughts on social media, the web and…” http://ff.im/-4Xz9N
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Liked “Google Has Done Bad Moves in the Past. Chrome OS is One of Them. – Thoughts on social media, the web and…” http://ff.im/-4Xz9N
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