Gmail Creator Says Chrome OS Is As Good As Dead 349
An anonymous reader writes "Former Google employee, Gmail creator, and FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit has come right out and said what many people are thinking (or hoping for). On his FriendFeed page, Buchheit made a post titled 'Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or "merged" with Android).' In it, he bluntly says that Google's netbook-centric Chrome OS is as good as dead. 'Yeah, I was thinking, "is this too obvious to even state?", but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason,' Buchheit writes. 'Because ChromeOS has no purpose that isn't better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display).'"
My prediction (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever the heck ChromeOS is (never heard of it), I can tell you one thing for sure: this guy Paul Buchheit might be right, but he sounds more like he has an axe to grind with the ChromeOS team than anything else.
Too big a change too soon (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with ChromeOS is it is trying to solve a problem them doesn't exist. Why upload data into the cloud if you don't need to share it or have access to it on the move?
You don't want to need to upload all your data to the cloud before you can do anything with it.
Cloud computing makes sense for people who want to rent computer processing power on an adhoc basis to solve computational problems.
Computing needs to gradually move to new technologies, it rarely makes huge leaps. ChromeOS would be better being a full Linux desktop for now with cloud services instead of being fully cloud based.
Re:Too big a change too soon (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if it were a problem, it's a problem they've solved on all the other OSes, because you can access the same Google apps on those. Investing in a ChromeOS machine provides you a set of advantages that are all present on lots of other machines, with none of those machines' other benefits. It'll have to sell on simplicity itself and a low device cost if it's to really work as a product.
Re:Bout time (Score:5, Interesting)
* Really, really read-only. I've rooted the OS, but the phone has some sort of additional protection in hardware that monitors the system partition. If the OS does somehow manage to alter it, the phone immediatly resets itsself, and the bootloader copies the OS back over from a secure backup. HTC evidently is very determined to maintain control over their phones.
Re:Bout time (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this different than a Win/Mac laptop which could have god-knows-what installed it on it at any time?
Re:Bout time (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually for us it's a business concern. We were evaluating whether or not to allow Android device to connect to our corporate intranet and decided against it for that very reason./.../
With the iPhone, we can force users to upgrade to the latest OS version, and give them a time window to comply. /.../
Yes, we (as an internal IT company) used to think along those lines.. but to us, the iOS family itself is fast becoming the last straw to the perimeter security model, where we controlled what devices are permitted inside, and trusted them completely. This isn't going to fly much longer. First of all, without infeasible expansion in IT staffing, we are unable to match the quick evolution in the mobile segment: count on no more than 18 months' lifecycles for mobile devices, before being replaced by something which would have to be re-integrated with our standards and network security. Second, the devices aren't company provided any more: the ugly 'consumerization' word is rearing its equally ugly head. People (for now, top management and early adopters) want to bring their own devices, be they smartphones or laptops, to work. We've been fighting a holding action against that trend, mostly on the grounds of security, and to some extent supportability, but few of us think that battle can be ultimately won.
Instead of restricting end users' devices to perpetually out-dated models, our integration, provisioning and security model is tenatively moving towards focusing on their interfaces (communications protocols, information standards), and reducing trust towards devices. For the near future, we'll have to restrict access to confidential information to company-approved devices, and setup network malware and DoS protection as part of the open segments of our internal company networks. In the mid-to-longer term (2+ years), we hope to see increased maturity in virtualization, allowing us to push out a trusted virtual desktop/smartphone image, to which users can switch when sensitive information has to be processed. You can understand our happiness over this announcement [taranfx.com], happening a bit faster than we were expecting (even if they aren't at the product stage yet).
"ChromeOS has no purpose"? (Score:2, Interesting)
"That isn't better served by Android"?
What purpose is that? Spying on and monetizing the minutia of your personal and professional life - then selling these off to third parties?
Google==Ministry of Truthiness