Many things have been said about Google Chrome OS since it was announced last Tuesday. From:
Forget the netbooks, which Google is targeting initally. We’ll see PCs of all types being sold by the major manufacturers as soon as Google gets this out of beta next year. Microsoft has a very serious competitive threat to the core of their revenues.
To:
Trying to make an OS out of Chrome is like saying you’re going to turn a Pontiac Aztek into a stretch limousine. I suppose it could be done, but why?
Windows and Office aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, even with some web apps fulfilling the needs of many normal users. On the other hand, it’s always nice to have another competitor in the OS market and hopefully their attempt to re-think what operating systems should be turn into something clever.
But, even in that scenario, there’s something more complex that Google will face: the netbooks paradigm.
People don’t get netbooks. In their heads netbooks are just cheap and smaller laptops. And even worse, they’re afraid of change, netbooks shipping with Linux experienced higher return rates than those with Windows XP and now, they’re almost out of the game.
Why it will be different with Chrome OS? Why should we think that when people get home with their brand new netbook, they’ll not replace Chrome OS for, let’s say, Windows 7?
Google says they are working with hardware partners and, to me, they should be focusing on putting the netbooks back to basic, so people could see them like a web-client machine instead of a small-cheap-laptop. Something like the CrunchPad but with the actual form factor, making things clear so nobody expects anything else.
That is what netbooks needs in order to prepare the path to Google’s vision of our “cloudy future”.
This will open the netbooks market as a real new niche, Chrome OS as the center of all this and people consuming web content around the house.
Yes, the house. We already have smartphones for the road.
