Sergey Brin: Windows Is "Torturing Users"

jbrodkin writes "Google created Chrome OS because Windows is 'torturing users,' Google co-founder Sergey Brin says. Only about 20% of Google employees use Windows, with the rest on Mac and Linux, and Brin hopes that by next year nearly all Googlers will be using Chromebooks. 'With Microsoft, and other operating system vendors, I think the complexity of managing your computer is really torturing users,' Brin told reporters at Google I/O. 'It's torturing everyone in this room. It's a flawed model fundamentally. Chromebooks are a new model that doesn't put the burden of managing the computer on yourself.' Google claims 75% of business users could be moved from Windows computers to Chrome laptops."

Echo of Marc Andreesen.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

At the height of hubris on the IPO of Netscape, Marc Andressen was confidently predicting that the browser could become the standard interface for all applications and the underlying operating system would be reduced to some kind of commodity like the beige boxes. We all know what happened after.

This time around, the big difference is, Google has a revenue stream, some independence from Windows and management has some proven track record. But they are not competing against Windows95 either. Every niche from phone size all the way to 35 inch cine screen, from sub Gig memory machines all the way up to 128 GB monsters, are fully populated and variety of processors and OSes and business models proliferate. May be Chromachines will cut through the clutter and succeed. Or not. Only time will tell.

VortexCortex: ChromeOS is "Torturing Developers"

[VortexCortex]

Hi all. Where's my Compiler & distributed revision control? (GCC, GIT), Why can't I rewind a Google Doc? Where's my local LAMP stack? Postgresql? SQLite? Code folding and syntax highlighting in Google docs? Not there? B-But, it's running on top of GNU/Linux. I know it's using some of this underneath, why can't I access it within ChromeOS? This hurts, it's the most limited OS I've ever seen short of on a dumb "smart phone".

No thanks, I've already got all of the benefits of Google's model of cloud storage... I'll keep using my traditional model of robust "cloud" storage: An editor with auto-save enabled, editing files in a local GIT repo, with a cron job doing git commit & git push every 5 minutes or so. Note: that remote repo -- it's part of my private cloud; I also have a cron job that creates a daily private bittorrent of my media collection -- my other PCs rsync the torrent & use BT to distributively sync the media folders I've selected them to store. Bonus, when I'm offline I still have access to all the important data, and some of whatever entertainment data I'm liking right now.