Google have announced that they will release a Google Chrome operating system in 2010.
Google Chrome OS will be an open source, lightweight OS, initially aimed at netbooks, that will begin shipping in 2010.
Google claim they have gone back to basics with the OS to provide the user with a fast, secure environment that will get them onto the web as quickly as possible.
Microsoft will wince when they read Google’s claim that they have completely redesigned the security architecture of the OS so that users won’t have to endure the onslaught of viruses, malware and endless security updates.
However, Apple won’t rest easy when they see that Google are aiming for a lightweight OS providing ease of use and accessibility, with a fast start-up that gets you onto the web in seconds. Those users that love Apple’s OS for it’s relative ease-of-use may be tempted by the Chrome OS, especially if they just want to surf the web and so have no need for all the additions to the Mac OS X that have been bolted onto the basic OS over the last five years.
Inherent in the Google Chrome OS experience is fast and safe web browsing. Clearly that rules out any Microsoft version of Internet Explorer and obviously Google aims to make the Google Chrome browser the heart of their new OS experience. To use any other browser would undermine the new security architecture.
But that begs a question for users here in the UK.
Will the EU allow it?
The EU have constantly attacked Microsoft over it’s bundling of IE with Windows. The EU lawmakers weren’t even satisfied when Microsoft announced that it would not be doing so with Windows 7. However, there are no expensive, pointless lengths to which the highly-paid EU civil servants won’t go in order to promote notional “competition” in the EU. Google may be in for a legal fight to retain the right to supply the whole Chrome package without offering a competitor’s product too.
What if there isn’t a competing product at the time? The EU will probably insist that Google provide developers with enough information so that they can make one! This is the EU we are talking about after all.
What If Microsoft produced a Chrome version of IE? Given the grip that the flawed Internet Explorer has on the psyche on many Windows users you can’t help but think that given the choice a huge number of new Chrome OS users would install and use IE and thereby eliminating the whole security point of the Chrome OS. Why would Microsoft be able to produce a secure browser for Chrome when it has failed to do so in eleven years for Windows?
But being totally illogical and senseless is not something that ever stopped the EU Commission’s work so Google had better be ready for a disappointment.
