Features of Google chrome Operating system

[brendentaylor]

Google has declared to luanch of it's operating system in 2010 and promised that Chrome OS devices will have the following five goodies:

Google has declared to luanch of it's operating system in 2010 and promised that Chrome OS devices will have the following five goodies:

1. Speedy boot-up, as fast as three seconds.
A Chrome OS device will not store any applications on the device itself. Nadda, none, zippo, says Pichai. Likewise, it will include only the hardware, right down to the component level, that Google has approved in its hardware reference specification. The only applications it will use are those that can be run from the cloud in a browser, the Chrome browser, to be specific. One of the primary reasons for this is to speed up boot time. With no local applications and limited hardware, the device doesn't need to run through long checklist looking for devices and drivers, loading programs into resident memory and so on. It should turn on like a television, says Pichai. Flip a switch and the within three seconds browser should be available, showing the most recent browser windows.

2. Security by default.
The portion of the operating system needed to operate the device will reside in a read-only section of memory. The rest of the operating system is integrated with the Chrome browser and, like the browser, security updates require nothing more than a reboot. Chrome OS can run multiple Web applications in multiple tabs and each one is locked down from all others, so a vulnerability in one Web app can't lead to exposure in another. User data stored on the device, which is minimal, is encrypted. User data is limited to items such as user preferences. All other data will be stored in the cloud. User preferences will also be synched to a cloud account, much like any thin client. Should you lose the device, you would merely log in from another one and your data and preferences should be there.

3. Support for both x86 and ARM architectures.
Google promises that it will be writing native code for both popular netbook CPUs.

4. The application menu.
As new Web applications come online tweaked for Chrome OS, Chrome OS will showcase them on a permanent tab it now calls the application menu. This will help users find new applications. Developers with new apps will find this an easier method to showcase them, too. Any Web application that runs in a standards compliant browser should work on a Chrome OS device. But Chrome OS is focused on supporting new protocols such as HTML 5, which, among other improvements, natively supports rich media.

5. A surprising way to support Microsoft Office.
If you ask a Google executive any question involving Microsoft, you'll hear the cliche answer -- that they company thinks only of users and not of potential competitors. But in one of the giggle-inducing moments of Thursday's demo, Pichai, showed how Chrome OS would handle Office documents -- via Microsoft Office Live, the free Web app version of Office available to Windows Live users. If a user clicks on an .xls document, Chrome launches Excel via the browser in Office Live. "Microsoft launched a killer app for Chrome OS . . . and is working very hard to do that," he quipped.

[didjamatic]

Google has driven innovation by creating WIN-WIN-WIN situations.  The user wins, the advertiser wins, Google wins.  They give as much as they can to all parties involved, they are unselfish and actually believe in something.

It wasn't that long ago when free email services restricted email to 2MB attachments and the trend was to give LESS totall mailbox storage, because they wanted you to buy premium email accounts.  I think hotmail had actually reduced it to 25-50MB.  Enter Gmail and 1GB storage that counted UP continually.

Before Google, search engines were so tattered with spam pages, they couldn't keep up with those who were setting up bogus sites to get into top search results with keyword spamming, bot-generated content, etc.  Google changed this.

On google's main page there is a button that says "I'm feeling lucky", they lose upwards of $20Million in ad revenue per day by allowing people to go directly to search results and have been called foolish for throwing money away, but they keep it there to remind them that not everything is about money.  Not everything is about squeezing every last dime out of every scenario.

They treat their employees better than any company I have ever heard of.  Onsite medical care, haircuts, 4x gourmet meals served per day, gyms, nap rooms, activities, pet care... http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/inside_google/

Google created their webapps and pushed more innovation than any other company in the last 10 years... and they keep doing it.  They give grants to students and research continually.

Google Earth/Maps?
Google image search?  
Blogger?
Google News?
And now a free cloud based OS.  Fantastic!

Seriously.  Google has spawned change and advancement of the internet more than any other company in the last 10 years.

I'm really excited for Google Chrome OS.  We have only begun to realize the benefits of virtualizing operating systems.

Hats off to Google.

[didjamatic]

If it is an ad, it's the best form there is, a satisfied customer praising a company that has earned their business.

I don't share your negative view on Google.  But I probably don't share your negative view on other things either, I am a positive person by nature.

[ch_123]

At the end of the day, no one cares who came up with the idea first. The person who comes up with the way to make it popular is the one people remember - whether that be through putting it in a nice usable package, or devious business practises. I think in Google's case it's more the former than the latter though.

The Chrome OS is an interesting idea, but it's a bit too locked down for my tastes.

[didjamatic]

What I envision is that I will still use my main OS on each PC that I own, but I will be able to launch a Google OS console from any of them that has my personal profile and settings on it.... and even data.  Reference to a "G drive" has been found and confirmed by Google so I hope they plan to integrate this OS with that online storage.
So from anywhere you can launch your "virtual PC" and have access to all of your data, settings, etc.

I don't think Google will require systems to boot to it's OS.  While that is an option, i'm sure they will allow you to launch it in a similar way that other virtualization technologies allow.

[ch_123]

They have said that it can only be run on certain select devices. And running it on top of a VM would be missing the point entirely...

[didjamatic]

Over the years we have gone from many to one (mainframe) to one to many (tranditional client server) to many to many where users have multiple devices and connect to multiple data points. (Home PC, Work PC, Laptop, Phone, Netbook, friends PC, etc)

Virtualizing a desktop allows you to use your many devices, but you don't have to maintain your favorites or documents or customizations on every device.  You can load the virtual environment on any of them.  So you literally have your PC with you everywhere you go.  

System dies at work?  Log in on another one and you instantly have all of your same data.
Need to move a few thousand people from Windows XP to Windows 7?  Create a new solid image, make a few changes, ask them to reboot, done.  Need to roll back to XP?  Make a change, ask them to reboot, done.

Real world scenario that happened 2 weeks ago:

I was in physical therapy with ice on my shoulder and I got a phone call that we had a problem with wireless networking in one of our warehouse areas.  I hung up, connected my iphone to vpn, launched a virtual desktop with all of my settings in it, launched the web interface of a wireless lan controller and identified an access point that was not allowing clients to connect.  I rebooted it, watched clients connect, disconnected from vpn and sent a text saying the issue was resolved... all in 90 seconds.

Having access to all of your data from anywere is more valuable than I could have imagined, I've been using logmein and other solutions as well and they have been great, but I still have the issue of needing to maintain each system to keep the things that matter to me on them.  Virtualization eliminates this.  Furthermore, it can be snapshotted and restored to any point in time, not just Windows System Restore.  So I have no concerns of ever messing anything on my system up, ever.

We've only begun to see how incredible this is going to be.

[cb951303]

i'll never understand cloud computing. if everything supposed to be handled on the cloud, why do we need expensive hardware like multi-core CPUs, GPUs, ultra-fast RAMs and SSDs etc.? It just seems too simple to be the modern day standard, and hardware manufacturers surely won't be happy about losing desktop users. IMHO a cloud OS is just a big fat fail.

[didjamatic]

i'll never understand cloud computing. if everything supposed to be handled on the cloud, why do we need expensive hardware like multi-core CPUs, GPUs, ultra-fast RAMs and SSDs etc.? It just seems too simple to be the modern day standard, and hardware manufacturers surely won't be happy about losing desktop users. IMHO a cloud OS is just a big fat fail.

BINGO!  That's much of the point, you don't need a big system, faster computer, etc.  In fact, most people who think their PC is too slow is actually a result of all of the garbage they load on the OS, not the OS or the hardware at all.  If you can eliminate the garbage and have a clean image they pull down (such as in a business network) their system stays fast and the users don't screw it up.  This huge amount of CPU and Memory available on systems is what allows Virtualization to be possible.  You can run 10-20 virtual servers on 1 physical server because most systems are essentially idle most of the time, combining them appropriately allows you to utilize hardware better.

Some things such as gaming will still need to be processed locally.  In the network world, we've reached something really cool where you can load a virtual environment that is stored on a server, but you can use your local system resources to power it.  It's very cool and allows us to use things like Autocad in a virtual desktop which was previously impossible.

But for Gaming, you will still be using local resources for now.  There are still many things you'll do on a local computer, but the majority of what people do does not require it any more.  Think about the percentage of time you spend in a web browser vs. everything else.  It's pretty significant.

[GenEric35]

2. Security by default.
... security updates require nothing more than a reboot...

• Only a reboot? are you sure you did mean 'no reboot'?
• My Asus motherboard has a thing called ExpressGate, it's accessible the moment I enter the boot sequence, resides entirely on a small ROM chip on the motherboard, launches Firefox, instant messaging client, and it probably won't ever require updates since it's mostly a plan B. Now, having chrome on that ExpressGate ROM chip, by default on all motherboard...
• This OS sounds like a terminal using terminal services with the difference that the corporate infrastructure usualy providing the applications, is, in this case, provided from the internet 'cloud' as opposed to the local lan or wan.

[ch_123]

Over the years we have gone from many to one (mainframe) to one to many (tranditional client server) to many to many where users have multiple devices and connect to multiple data points. (Home PC, Work PC, Laptop, Phone, Netbook, friends PC, etc)

Virtualizing a desktop allows you to use your many devices, but you don't have to maintain your favorites or documents or customizations on every device.  You can load the virtual environment on any of them.  So you literally have your PC with you everywhere you go.  

System dies at work?  Log in on another one and you instantly have all of your same data.
Need to move a few thousand people from Windows XP to Windows 7?  Create a new solid image, make a few changes, ask them to reboot, done.  Need to roll back to XP?  Make a change, ask them to reboot, done.

Real world scenario that happened 2 weeks ago:

I was in physical therapy with ice on my shoulder and I got a phone call that we had a problem with wireless networking in one of our warehouse areas.  I hung up, connected my iphone to vpn, launched a virtual desktop with all of my settings in it, launched the web interface of a wireless lan controller and identified an access point that was not allowing clients to connect.  I rebooted it, watched clients connect, disconnected from vpn and sent a text saying the issue was resolved... all in 90 seconds.

Having access to all of your data from anywere is more valuable than I could have imagined, I've been using logmein and other solutions as well and they have been great, but I still have the issue of needing to maintain each system to keep the things that matter to me on them.  Virtualization eliminates this.  Furthermore, it can be snapshotted and restored to any point in time, not just Windows System Restore.  So I have no concerns of ever messing anything on my system up, ever.

We've only begun to see how incredible this is going to be.

That's basically what Google is doing, except without VM software. Everyone runs the same standardized image which is automatically updated off the net. Then everyone's files gets stored on the net. The tradeoff here is that they are only letting it run on certain machines. I agree otherwise about the sheer usefulness of VMs. It would make maintenance of offices and colleges an awful lot easier...

[didjamatic]

This OS sounds like a terminal using terminal services with the difference that the corporate infrastructure usualy providing the applications, is, in this case, provided from the internet 'cloud' as opposed to the local lan or wan.

That is exactly what it is, without the requirement of a special hardware layer or terminal, it should be able to be launched from any system.  Now if you want to BOOT into it, that will require special hardware.  I've worked with systems that PXE boot off of the local network (or WAN) but never one that knew how to go out to the internet to pull down a boot image.

EDIT:  It's likely that their OS is a stripped bare Linux distro that loads just enough resources to launch their browser (or whatever app delivers the virtual desktop)  But they were talking a 3 second boot?  IDK.

[ch_123]

With SSDs and at least some stuff stored in the firmware, it's possible.

[GenEric35]

Yea, if it does download a small OS image from the net, that would be something, reminds me 8-10 years ago when hotmail was giving only 20MB inbox and selling a premium service for 100MB, and Google released GMail and gave everyone 1GB inbox for free.

...
They treat their employees better than any company I have ever heard of.  Onsite medical care, haircuts, 4x gourmet meals served per day, gyms, nap rooms, activities, pet care... http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/2006/inside_google/
...
I'm really excited for Google Chrome OS.  We have only begun to realize the benefits of virtualizing operating systems.

Hats off to Google.

So when working at Google, they take care of your 'life', they own it. Imagine how many hours a week people work there. I once was interested and looked up what projects the developers worked on(read an interview), and it wasn't like the cool applications they 'give' to the world, it was '****ty' problems that would make me not want to go to work. After reading the article I decided it was more fun to be the customer that gets all the good stuff for free than the employee that works there on things that aren't even related to the good stuff.

Nothing new there, big companies like Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Google, they
give either tons of benefits or cash(productivity is expected in return), they all had one thing in common, the employees are there to work, and work very hard(80 hours a week on occasions, every week being a new occasion). For example, IBM at one point paid their employees double than what they were worth. But everyone there caught the bait and believed that's actually what they were worth, and bough expensive cars, expensive houses, but then they employer had them since no other company would give them that kind of money to keep paying the loans. The company owned their lives and they ended up working 80 hours a week, all the time.

What I'm saying is I'm not sure working at Google is as fun as it looks like.

But, sitting at home on a Saturday morning, with a cup of coffee, being able to use Google search engine to find whatever topic I might be interested in, hats off to Google and Gmail indeed.
I still have that email they sent to gmail members saying they were going public and that we could buy shares at the base price, after 6 months they were worth 10 times that, after 7 years, now worth 50 times the original price.

[o2dazone]

Despite Google as an evil empire, they're the only one with big enough minerals to risk alienating a big portion of internet users to further the advancement of where the web should be heading (I'm talking about castrating IE6 users everything Google touches). That alone is commendable in my book.

Oh and Chrome's Javascript engine, V8, is amazing.

[PRISONER 24601]

I for one welcome our new Google overlords

[microsoft windows]

Google Chrome is bad enough. I definitely don't want to use their operating system. Now a Mozilla operating system, that's a different story...

[ch_123]

How is Google Chrome bad? Does it not run on Windows 3.11?

[microsoft windows]

It doesn't run on Windows 2000, it's unreliable, and pretty slow, especially if you have a bunch of tabs open. Mozilla works much better.

[ch_123]

Funny, from extensive experience with both, I'd say that Chrome is faster, and definitely more stable (the amount of lockups I've had with Windows 7 and Linux was reduced to almost negligible quantities since I stopped using Firefox). I also prefer it's interface. It isn't perfect by any means, but I much prefer it over Firefox.

[microsoft windows]

With Windows 7, I've always used Internet Explorer. It works very well and very fast, faster than Mozilla and Googlechrome. In addition, it is well-integrated into Windows. You should honestly put aside all bad memories for a few minutes and give IE8 a shot.

[ch_123]

I did. It sucked. Even if it didn't, it lacks some of the nice features that other browsers have.

Maybe someday they'll get it right.

[ds26gte]

Funny, from extensive experience with both, I'd say that Chrome is faster, and definitely more stable (the amount of lockups I've had with Windows 7 and Linux was reduced to almost negligible quantities since I stopped using Firefox). I also prefer it's interface. It isn't perfect by any means, but I much prefer it over Firefox.

Say what you will about Firefox (and there's lots to say...), it is the only keyboard-friendly browser out there.  And that is without any add-ons!  Mouseless Browsing and LoL (née HaH) are probably fine, but I find single-quote and Return enough.  

IE and Safari will never ever allow keyboard-only operation, because the companies behind them have mice to sell!  :-)

[PRISONER 24601]

I love google chrome but it just doesn't have the features of ff+plugins. it's also kind of unstable on my system, locks up frequently. same deal goes with opera. if it just had more plugin support..

[microsoft windows]

Say what you will about Firefox (and there's lots to say...), it is the only keyboard-friendly browser out there.  And that is without any add-ons!  Mouseless Browsing and LoL (née HaH) are probably fine, but I find single-quote and Return enough.  

IE and Safari will never ever allow keyboard-only operation, because the companies behind them have mice to sell!  :-)

I like Mozilla Firefox as well. I use that the most on my computers.

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

IE8 has some problems on my copies of Windows 7, it keeps on saying there is an error and it needs to close, but then it never closes.  Anyone know why?  If it helps, it is Windows 7 Professional Build 7600.

[ch_123]

I never really invested much effort into fixing IE's problems. You should try either Chrome, Firefox or Opera. Actually, try all three, you're bound to find one that suits you best.

[Xuan]

Say what you will about Firefox (and there's lots to say...), it is the only keyboard-friendly browser out there.  And that is without any add-ons!  Mouseless Browsing and LoL (née HaH) are probably fine, but I find single-quote and Return enough.  

IE and Safari will never ever allow keyboard-only operation, because the companies behind them have mice to sell!  :-)

You should try Opera, the default shortcuts are much better.

[microsoft windows]

I'm sticking with my old crummy PC's. No Google Chrome.

[keyb_gr]

I'm sticking with my old crummy PC's. No Google Chrome.

But still lots of other modern browsers, thankfully.

BTW, I can tell you why Chrome won't even install on 2000. Once I tried Safari 3 (another Webkit based browser) on my geekbox with 2000, and while it sorta worked, it was about as stable as a house of cards (crashing when calling the prefs dialog and stuff like that). Apparently it also did font smoothing on its own, making for rather sluggish scrolling on my not-so-crummy but still dated machines.

Incidentally, I still use Seamonkey rather than Firefox since I could never get over a few user interface idiosyncrasies of the latter. If I had a real crummy old rig, Opera would probably be it (though I'd have to look for a suitable urlfilter.ini then).

[cheater1034]

I'm not a fan of the web based OS idea.

Not everybody only uses the internet, people enjoy non-internet games, office stuff (ok, who wants to use the internet to write a paper or spreadsheet). Plus for the huge population of individuals who rely on spotty wifi connections (especially if travelling with a laptop), should be able to do things without the internet :\

Chrome (4.x anyway) is the fastest browser i've used and soon will be more featureful than firefox (it's already getting close), but chromium os is a no for me
by far the best webkit browser ^^ - safari is probably the worst webkit browser (extremely bloated and slow - last i tried it, it ate all my ram). There are many light weight webkit browsers (midori, arora, etc) - which are very fast and light but they lack several things that most people want in a browser nowadays.

chrome (atleast 4.x version) supports extensions now too, not many are available yet but there are some (such as adblock+, smooth scrolling)

[cheater1034]

I think it comes with its own web server and such (sortof like lamp or wamp) so you can run webapps locally without a connection.

That's good then, I still think that web apps (like ms office live) are inferior to the non-web apps (ms office > ms office live) - but things may certainly improve yet, it's a way away yet. (HA! I said "a way away" and it made sense kind of!)

It may be for many people, and I think google is the best for everything (browser, free email, "wave", groups, search, etc.) - I definitely support google > microsoft and apple, but i dont think chromium os will be for me.

[ch_123]

That's pretty much the general consensus that myself and most of the people I've talked to about Chrome OS came to - cool idea, but not for me.

[o2dazone]

Just to note and sorry for bumping a topic with a derail, but Chrome just received a keyboard navigation extension. Very very rough around the edges, but figured the kb nuts would give it a go

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jdfpnijdiejbhebabijgoibmnngiblhk

Req. Dev or Beta channels of Chrome (I believe?) or a compiled version of Chromium for Mac (developers forgot to fork the dev branch before disabling extensions and pushing it up to beta lol)

[GenEric35]

thanks for posting this o2, this is great great news as far as i'm concerned

I highly value keyboard navigation, when I make a desktop app I put a lot of attention to keyboard shortcuts and tab order, but too often I see this has been skipped, in most cases I'm referring to, i know the dev and he doesn't care about shortcuts because he prefers to reach for the mouse.

For a long time I always bought the latest and greatest mouse and mouse pad available as soon as it came out, neglecting the keyboard, but this was mostly because i was playing more games than working. Today it's the opposite, I simply hate to have to reach out for the mouse when I could keep my hands on the keyboard, and the more you work with shortcuts, the less often you have to reach for the mouse and each you do have to reach for the mouse it simply breaks the pace.

My opinion is that computing is a keyboard thing, and the mouse is just something that was added by apple for artists to draw and model 3d objects, then was copied for other pc, and considered a must, it probably is a bit part of why computers are so mainstream today. It works very well for artists, one hand stays on the keyboard to select a tool with a keyboard shortcut, and the other hand stays on the mouse to move the tool, image or 3d object. It's great for artists but I'm not one.

I say bring back the keyboards, bring back the fun into computing.

And doing a task with a mouse is so inconsistent, while doing something with a run command, a shortcut or a command is usually 1 or 2 steps, with a mouse requires moving in regions all over the screen, open a window to a window to a context menu, and each task requires a different set of these, it's only good for doing presentation so people see where you're going, otherwise it's like constantly chasing a carrot on a stick. Things in command line or shortcuts are usually organized more logically, while things in GUI are organized visually.

Anyway, I really like the gmail client shortcuts, how pressing "?" shows a list of context relevant keyboard shortcuts. Looking forward to more solutions that fully integrate keyboard navigation.