Google Reveals Chrome Hardware Partners 343
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the because-they-can dept.
from the because-they-can dept.
nk497 writes "Google has announced the hardware partners for the Chrome OS — so we can expect to see netbooks running the operating system next year from the likes of Asus, Acer, and HP, as well as Toshiba. Dell didn't seem to make the list, at least yet. Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."
Noooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Air (Score:5, Insightful)
Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."
I am thinking more among the lines of Adobe AIR and seamlessly linking the Google OS platform with the AIR API.
what is Google's strategic intent here? (Score:5, Insightful)
... so are they evil NOW? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will Chrome OS be any different... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Everyone's heard of Google already and many are using it. Google will be different sheerly because everyone else will be using it and it'll be better supported by both the company and random people you know or meet. Also, you know Google isn't going anywhere for a long, long time.
Re:I would absolutely love this (Score:1, Insightful)
You'd absolutely love this, would you? Would you love it when Google Docs goes down, or your internet connection stops working, when it's time to give your presentation?
When the inevitable happens as above, you'll suddenly wish you had local storage, and local applications.
Re:Marketing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless this offers any real advantage I won't move to it
The real advantage it offers is that Google, a company that the average end user has heard of, is pushing it. There's also half a chance that the OS will be user-friendly enough for the average end user not to run screaming from, unlike most Linux distros. Hell, they may even be able to use it without ever having to see a command prompt.
All this means it's actually in with a chance of competing with Windows on the desktop.
Re:what is Google's strategic intent here? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheaper netbooks with Google branding on them, to drive you to Google search.
Non Windows netbooks with some unheard of Linux distribution have been a flop, they want to see if the Google brand can sell them, and if it does, they want the buyers looking at Google ads.
People Failing To Grasp Chrome Just Like Android (Score:3, Insightful)
One just has to look at the silly posts back when Android was announced and all the inane and irrelevant garbage spewed about the goddamn iPhone and if Android was an 'iPhone killer'.
With every major cellphone maker coming out with Android phones and demoing their custom interfaces and software built on top of Android and Windows Mobile virtually forgotten about, you would think people would wise up and grasp how huge this move by Google is into the netbook market.
WTF, Google. You're teaming up w/Adobe, too? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way.
First off, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone is teaming up with Adobe to include Adobe web stuff that it's not going to focus on Acrobat but on Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and that whole ecosystem.
That out of the way, what the Flippety Friggery, Google?
You're building a new OS based on the Linux kernel + Chrome Browser, which is cool because these are both high-quality Free Software projects. But then you wander off and sidle up to Adobe instead of working with Free Software such as Gnash [gnu.org].
This seems like a repeat of the situation with the ARM folks. Gnash has had ARM support for several years, but instead of the ARM people collaborating with Gnash to get full Flash support on their processors, the ARM people worked with Adobe to make a whole new port to ARM [slashdot.org], instead.
Now Google is working on a slick new OS and has an amazing opportunity to have the whole thing be Free Software. Gnash is getting very mature, and with support from a organization like Google it could easily become the best Flash player on Free OSes, if not on all OSes.
C'mon Google: Team up with Gnash and other Free Software projects and make Chrome OS one for the history books.
2010 will be the year of Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not good for free software (Score:5, Insightful)
From the perspective of the user, what is worse than being dependent on non-free software such as Flash?
Answer - being dependent on non-free software that only runs on someone else's machine as a remote service. The goal of Chrome is to replace customer lock-in to Windows and Office with lock-in to Google's "software as a service". Since customer data will be held hostage by Google, along with the only applications that can read it, no "Openoffice" or "Linux" will be coming to rescue the user from this lock-in. But hey, it's Google, they won't "be evil", right? (hollow laughter).
I am unsure why other free software advocates are supporting this idea, unless the enemy of Microsoft is automatically our friend.
Re:People Failing To Grasp Chrome Just Like Androi (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry - in a year or two, Apple will finally release a netbook, and then we can hear people branding Google OS as being "An Apple nEtbOok [or whatever it'll be called] killer".
Google is not making an OS... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's all about the FUD and you guys are eating it up, I would have thought that the Linux fanbois would have figured that out by now.
Re:Will Chrome OS be any different... (Score:3, Insightful)
You just don't have enough money for the bank to care about you (Neither do I).
If someone with enough money calls in, or someone higher up in the bank wants it, I would think it would happen.
Re:Google is not making an OS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like OSX is nothing more then a distro of BSD? If someone (say Google) makes "just another distro" that actually brings Linux out into the mainstream, then I'm all for it. What's the harm of it, anyways? Google's releasing the source code so can't really understand how this may be evil. I must be missing the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt angle.
Re:I would absolutely love this (Score:4, Insightful)
How does your company feel about you keeping the presentation data on Google servers?
Well, I work at an not-for-profit scientific institute, so we are encouraged to share information with the rest of the world.
Re:Air (Score:3, Insightful)
Hate to break it to you, but the Flash plugin sucks on every platform.
Re:I would absolutely love this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Air (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Marketing..... (Score:4, Insightful)
But even with all those advantages, I expect the three way combination of Microsoft FUD, Microsoft genuine attempts to compete by improving their products, and consumer comfort with Microsoft will still leave Redmond controlling more than 90% of the PC market.
Re:No Intel or AMD ? (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO, ChromeOS is probably going to be geared more for cheap 'internet appliances' where ARM is much better suited. If you don't need to worry about platform compatibility, why would you even consider a legacy ISA like x86 that consumes more power and runs hotter? I'm sure they're going to support x86 simply because it currently dominates the available hardware, but I'd bet COTS ChromeOS devices will mostly come packing ARMs.
Re:Air (Score:5, Insightful)
youtube is owned by google, and I believe its rather popular, and runs on flash. 95% of all video on the net is streamed through flash these days
Re:I would absolutely love this (Score:5, Insightful)
How does you company feel about keeping it's money in outside banks?
Why Dell isn't on the list (Score:3, Insightful)
Because "Dell recommends Windows Vista Professional". I know that to be true, because it's always printed on EVERY D*MN PAGE of every one of their catalogs.
I wonder how much they get paid for doing that?
Re:This is not good for free software (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, having Google out there in the OS business means that we're probably going to see better cross-platform support by large players. Right now just about every company/website/service supports Windows. A large subset of those support OSX. And a somewhat smaller subset also support GNU/Linux. If a GNU/Linux-based OS comes along with the might of Google behind it, we're probably going to see a lot more companies stepping up to support that kind of stack.
Did you miss the part about this being strictly a "web OS"?
Every company/website/service will support Chrome OS eventually, but that doesn't mean that they will support Linux. No more than companies writing Android applications today somehow support Linux. For both Android and Chrome OS, Linux kernel and base system is really just an internal implementation detail, and not something that application developers will deal with directly. Forget about POSIX as well.
Third, standards. Google has done a pretty darn good job of supporting them, unlike other big players. More Google software out there will probably mean greater support for standards.
Uh, they're partnering with Adobe. You can bet that means Flash. Sure, they will ship WebKit there, with decent HTML5 support, at least - but so long as it has Flash out of the box, too, everyone will just keep using that.