No need to check your calendar. It is not April 1. This is not a joke. I suspect the Steves--Ballmer and Jobs--have gone to the Pepto bottle already! Google is in the operating system business and not just for phones.
"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve."
That word is fresh from Google's official blog. It is a radical upheaval. It is a game changer. Google has just made me a friend with benefits!
Until now when you bought a computer you also bought an operating system--or at least an overwhelming majority did. The operating system provides the underpinnings that lets applications work with processors and other hardware. Purchasing an operating system is expensive. It is a significant contributing factor to Bill Gates' riches.
Google's Chrome OS promises to change that in a few radical ways. By using the words "open source" Google is screaming free. They promise it is "a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."
Beyond that Google's OS will make programs hardware agnostic.
For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
As if that weren't enough Google promises they're "redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates." Tall order. It's tough not to be a skeptic when so many people are so heavily motivated to break into your computer.
We are about to enter a brave new world. Everything will change.
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