I'm not the first to say this, but the idea behind Google's forthcoming Chrome OS reminds me of the Network Computer (NC), a driveless desktop unveiled by Larry Ellison in 1996. Back then, here's what I wrote about NC: "Do you really want to do without a floppy, hard, or CD-ROM drive? Be unable to compute -- or even access your data -- when the server goes down? Watch performance slow to a crawl during peak hours? An Internet appliance has everyman appeal at first glance; but on closer inspection, it's two steps back to those bad old mainframe days when Big Brother owned the computer, not you."
[ InfoWorld's Neil McAllister offers a razor-sharp analysis of Google's OS in his Fatal Exception blog. ]
Now, 13 years later, Google has raised a similar proposition: an OS that pretty much dictates that you'll be living your computing life on the Internet and storing your data and preferences there, too. So let's break down that hoary old critique of mine and see if it still applies.
First of all, when I knocked the NC for lacking local storage, I was referring mainly to performance. At the time, 28.8bps modems were typical and putting personal storage at the end of such a slender connection seemed like a really bad idea. Now, some Chrome OS computers will have solid-state drives or hard disks, and some may only have a cache (who knows?), but it doesn't matter much. You'll be computing in the cloud. Broadband plus a fast JavaScript engine equals good enough performance, so score one for Google.
Now we come to the part about being unable to compute or access your data when the "server" goes down. (It could be the "server" or it could be the connection, but whatever.) Well, I imagine some implementation of Google Gears will be included, so you'll have some limited offline access to data. But more to the point, I can't remember the last time my work or home broadband connections went down and Google has a pretty darn good availability record. So Google gets another two points.
The reference to "peak hours" is a legacy of the days when mainframes or "online services" would choke on too many simultaneous users. But I believe in the magic of Google's hyperscalable server cloud, so I have to give 'em another one.
Which leads us to the final "Big Brother," point. Google is already the gatekeeper of the Internet; should it also be the keeper of your data? It does seem to be time to trot out the old cliche about absolute power corrupting absolutely. At the very least, I can't imagine enterprises ceding their data to Google (the SLAs on Google Apps, for example, aren't exactly business class).
But a near-zero-config thin client, with all my data and preference available from any Chrome OS device, is an awfully appealing idea. And if I had my choice, who would I want to play host? Oracle? Microsoft? IBM?
Well, I'm not ready to hand over the entire casket of family jewels to Google, either. But the technical hurdles to a modern-day NC have largely been vaulted, and HTML 5 and CSS 3 should enable desktop-class apps in the browser. The fact that I'm even considering what data I might or might not "give up" -- and that a simple announcement implying no new groundbreaking technology has caused such an avalanche of speculation -- is testament to the power of the Google brand. Should it be any more powerful than it is?
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Why does everyone think as though a one-size-fits-all compute environment would be a good thing. rcprimak, the reason we need yet another OS is simply that no one OS can be all things to all people. In addition, out of all the Operating Systems written so far only a hand full can even be called decent. Software is still petty much in the dark ages, and it looks like it will be awhile before folks natural reluctance to change will allow significant improvement.
But this one size fits all thing: In case you have not noticed everyone has multiple compute environments, not one. We have the the social web, where nothing is private, and all is published for the world to see. Yes I know there are constraints of sorts, but the whole point of the exercise is sharing data. Then there is the business web, with huge variability in accessibility as well as connectivity, and literally thousands of sub-environments for individuals to work within. Spawned from that is the Personal Computing world, and again we find an enormous variability in both capacity and connectivity, and an even greater range of need for man-machine interfaces. Beyond that comes a compute world so vast, most folks never think about it, imbedded processors and special application systems. Here to, is a mind numbing range in compute power and connectivity. One style of OS, much less one OS, just will not suffice.
Therefore, I would be delighted to use Chrome OS to update Facebook, but I will continue to treasure my laptop with a Titanium case, a RISC processor, and a Mach Kernel OS, NO onboard radios and single NIC that is never plugged into a routable sub-net, for it hosts my private data. Chrome compete with Windows? Why bother, Microsoft is doing a fine job killing that franchise on their own.
Robert X. Cringely has just posted an interesting blog entry about how easily Google's Password Recovery System was hacked. To the great embarassment of a certain Twitter executive who had been using Google Docs and their other Cloud Services.
And this is the Company who wants to own your next Operating System! HAH!!
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I don't care if "the technical hurdles to a modern-day NC have largely been vaulted": the idea that anyone should propose "to hand over the entire casket of family jewels to Google" -- or anyone else, for that matter -- is to ignore the very real aspect that it's your data, and you're now trusting a third party who doesn't even know you to secure that data, along with however many others buy into this madness. You can bet that security will be minimal, and will only be in the provider's best interest, not yours. I worked on a network similar to this description some 20 years ago -- and if dear readers are not familiar with the marginally vulgar pejorative merited by the construct, I'm certain other dear readers can supply it for them. Another idea whose time has gone.