Chrome OS: Will it succeed?
We talked earlier to Stephen Shankland about the basics of the upcoming OS, but now we want to know the inevitable question: Will it succeed? We talk to Brad Linder, who covers netbooks at Liliputing, and Brian Tong of CNET.
Brad doesn't exactly consider this a slam dunk. He cites the problems inherent in the early days of netbooks, when none of the machines ran Windows. People often wanted what they were used to, and with an unfamiliar operating system, many people were less than excited about the prospect of running Linux.
Brian isn't sold either. Chrome OS expects users to use exclusively web based applications, but what about when an internet connection goes south? After the show Brian noted that Google Gears exists for these scenarios, but that isn't bullet proof either. He much prefers the stability and reliability of a traditional notebook OS feel rather than the promise of a web specific OS.
What's your take? Are you excited about Chrome OS and the future promise that it holds? Sound off in the comments and make your voice be heard.
Guests:
[...] but not exactly a Windows killer, check out my post on Download Squad or recent appearance on the Techvi video show (pardon the enormous headphones, I couldn’t find a smaller pair in time for the [...]
I don’t think that MS has much to worry about from Google on this. I think Brad is right, people have come to expect a certain functionality from a laptop, whether normal sized or netbook sized and Google needs to deliver as much of that expected functionality as possible. Lining up hardware vendors is good, but it is the software vendors that need to be on board as well. Cloud computing is not just about web apps (Skype, Amazon S3/Jungle Disk, 3G connection software for example) , and that is something that Google needs to realize in order to make this a success.
I also think that they need to reverse the course they took with Chrome where there is little to no integration with Google apps. It is one thing to be able to create a application shortcut to Gmail and another to have it be the default primary mail handler for the OS. Contact integration should be everywhere, and Google needs to step up with Reader/RSS and Google Bookmarks integration as well. I think that they will drive Google fans to the OS if the integration is tight and works well.