Google Buys Company Whose Software Turns Old PCs Into Chromebooks (siliconangle.com) 75
This week Google "quietly acquired a company called Neverware Inc. that sells software to transform old personal computers and Macs into Chromebook devices," reports SiliconANGLE:
The acquisition was announced by Neverware on Twitter, and Google later confirmed the news in a statement. Google had taken part in the company's Series B funding round three years ago.
Neverware's software is called CloudReady OS, and though it's primarily aimed at schools and enterprises that want to transform fleets of machines into Chromebooks, there's also a free Home edition that anyone can use... Google's plan is to make CloudReady an official product. "We can confirm that the Neverware team is joining the Google Chrome OS team," Google said in a statement.
Neverware's software is called CloudReady OS, and though it's primarily aimed at schools and enterprises that want to transform fleets of machines into Chromebooks, there's also a free Home edition that anyone can use... Google's plan is to make CloudReady an official product. "We can confirm that the Neverware team is joining the Google Chrome OS team," Google said in a statement.
Wasn't that the goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely they knew that if they did their job correctly, Google would buy them at some point in the future.
Don't be hatin'... (Score:2)
('success' is a little bit different in dot-com land)
Re: Wasn't that the goal? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Uhhh. it's called Linux, you might have heard of it...
Re:How about the opposite goal. (Score:4, Funny)
Lie Nukes? Nope, never heard of it.
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It's magic! (Score:5, Funny)
I can't wait to see my old PC tower being magically transformed into a laptop!
Re: It's magic! (Score:2)
Duct tape, an lcd monitor, and a backpack fully of batteries. Ultimate lan party machine for the digital punk of the go.
Re: It's magic! (Score:2)
Suitcase desktops are actually virtually what you described. No batteries though and you generally do HDMI to a modern TV set.
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I have an old DolchPAC 65 system, it's a luggable PC from the late 90's that includes keyboard and monitor. While I'd love to slip a modern motherboard in it, the case is just custom enough to be a hassle to modify. All five of us on Slashdot that would pay tens of dollars to have a nice mini-ITX or microATX luggable case apparently isn't a large enough market for a manufacturer to take it on.
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I remember these old "laptops" but I was referring more to custom jobs where people take a hard shell suitcase and create a custom mount to secure a motherboard and other components inside. Then you take it to your friends, open the case, plug in the PSU and HDMI, and you are off. Works great with something like Xbox controllers over bluetooth to PC. This is really a hobby space though with all DIY but it's basically a revisit of the luggable you mention.
Most of the luggables were also a pretty niche market
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One company is making a modern version of it, calling it a briefcase PC.
Unlike the old suitcase PC, the keyboard and screen are on the side allowing for a much larger screen since modern screens are thinner.
https://www.tomshardware.com/n... [tomshardware.com]
I've seen those DolchPac PCs, I kinda want one of the originals from the 90s as a portable DOS machine.
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What about a Kickstarter?
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my old PC tower
Get off my lawn! [visionlearning.com]
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Ah the cursing at bad/changed (AT) keyboard layout, and those useless redundant grey arrow keys getting in the way. :p Truly, those were good times.
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Get off my lawn! [wikimedia.org]
Re: It's magic! (Score:2)
Like the SGI Indy in Twister?
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That idea is old as dirt (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work on "old PCs for schools" in the 90's. It never took off, and it's gonna take off even less today, now that kids are getting used to getting the latest and greatest computing junk at 6 months of age. Not to mention, those in charge of acquisition in schools who have any sense of what's good for the kids won't buy friggin' Google advertisement machines.
These guys positioned themselves to get bought buy Google and they pulled it off.
Re:That idea is old as dirt (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't work in the 1st world.
But plenty of 3rd world schools would love to have these computers.
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You mean lile those schools in the Amazonian jungle or in the African bush with no money for modern PCs and gigabit internet for the Chromebooks to connect to the Google mothership?
Re:That idea is old as dirt (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Chromebooks don't need Gigabit-ethernet.
2. Many poor countries have much better, cheaper, and more reliable internet than America does.
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Didn't they try that with One Laptop Per Child?
OLPC was $200.
A retired Windows laptop is way cheaper than that.
My local Goodwill thrift store sells working laptops for $25.
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And, most importantly, in the day of OLPC, laptops were still intended for running local applications - and OLTP laptops didn't have Windows, so couldn't run any apps except those written specifically for it. Chromebooks have already proven themselves in schools, so these new, old laptop 'Chromebooks' are just as good as the real thing. Better, maybe, in some cases...
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IDK - my kids have Chromebooks for their school work.
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Yep, the existence of Chromebooks is why 1-Laptop-per-Child declared their work was complete in the USA.
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Is that true? Is there not a 32-bit version of ChromeOS? There certainly could be, and if this outfit is dedicated to keeping old laptops useful, that would double their inventory. 64-bit laptops are still viable Windows (or Linux) machines. 32-bit ones, alas, are mostly out of luck. I guess you can find some Linux distro still supporting 32-bit hardware, but you're not gonna get the latest LTS Ubuntu.
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The Achilles heel of this project (for 32-bit era laptops, at least) might be that those old machines didn't have cameras. In the age of Zoom remote learning, a camera is a pretty necessary component in the market these things are targeting...
Re: That idea is old as dirt (Score:2)
Do they still sell USB web cams, that can be clipped to the top of the screen?
A bit clunky and awkward compared to having a built in camera, but still good enough for Zoom meetings.
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Why acquire? (Score:2)
How is this acquisition necessary for Google. Couldn't they trivially spin up this technology in house. And couldn't they market it more by putting it under the Google umbrella than by this team building the market for years?
Re:Why acquire? (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't necessary, but the acquisition saves them time and they get a team of employees who already have a track record of working together.
TFA doesn't say the price, but I doubt if they paid much. No one else has any plausible interest in this company, so there would have been no bidding war.
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How is this acquisition necessary for Google.
To eliminate competition - as simple as that.
Eliminating competition this way has been Google's MO for years!
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That's a good idea to create a company that can be bought by Microsoft!
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the only possible 'competition' is if they were including the Chromium browser instead of Chrome. Then Google would've lost some of Chrome's 'call home' features, I guess in a non-official fork. Still, most of that they get through gMail, Google search and YouTube - regardless of the browser.
for the most part, Google probably doesn't oppose the idea of repurposing old hardware this way. Chromebooks are more locked down - but it's all mostly to keep the OEM's happy, I'd think. They can't do anything abou
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>Couldn't they trivially spin up this technology in house.
Not necessarily - one of the big advantages enjoyed by both Apple and Chromebooks (in different ways) is tight control over the hardware - hardware compatibility is actually a huge nightmare unless you're Microsoft and have such overwhelming market dominance that you can make the hardware vendors do all the hard work for you.
Between the existing software that can be deployed today instead of once it's redeveloped from scratch, and the existing tea
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Interesting, I assumed ChromeOS was similar to Android - a ton of manufacturers all creating (to greater or lesser extent) to some spec.
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I believe it is - but that spec is set by Google, so they're free to ignore all other hardware in existence - if someone wants to make a Chromebook, they'll make it to Google's specs since otherwise they have to create drivers, etc. themselves.
You'd get a similar effect if Apple decided to open up their OS to other hardware manufacturers, without supporting any additional hardware - a Hackintosh draws from the same tiny pool of supported hardware as a Mac, for the simple reason that if it includes any but t
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I haven't looked at hardware detection in a while, but I assume if this is primarily for laptops (cause it seems that's the normal use case), they could do model number based internet lookups (or a giant database) to avoid needing to do hardware detection. Like, fairly finite collection of hardware to be identified.
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I suspect that's actually more difficult than just querying the attached hardware - especially since I see no reason to assume it's restricted to laptops. In fact old laptops are generally in far worse shape than equivalent desktops thanks to the beating they take - hard drives especially are extremely failure prone when they get banged around in a laptop, and are probably the leading excuse I've seen for an upgrade. And of course cleaning a clogged laptop cooling system is usually a real nightmare.
Genera
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could be they simply plan to reuse the band name and destroy the company, then close down the brand in a few months to force people tp buy newer PC's.
Old PCs are always more susceptible (Score:1)
to virus infections.
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Re: Old PCs are always more susceptible (Score:2)
In this case no, since the software is replaced.
More like the firmware and hardware.
Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
If you want more of this story, here's the /. dupe from four days ago:
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Give Those Kids Spybooks (Score:3, Informative)
Gotta keep tabs on those whippersnappers.
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How's that smartphone working out?
What's gonna change? (Score:2)
MARKETING REACH (Score:2)
Apple abandon you?
Microsoft won't update anymore? Is Windows slower? Got hacked?
Google will give you back your computer again! (irony intended)
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It can work for MANY typical users. (Score:2)
When I took CNC machining for giggles in retirement I found the typical community college intro to computers class was just an intro to Windows and Office, which to be fair was appropriate for the demographics.
Another thing they taught students was how to save everything to the cloud, under to (accurate) assumption students were incapable of managing a general purpose PC and would often lose locally stored work to adverse events. They were genuinely better off with appliances like Chromebooks which might be
Re: It can work for MANY typical users. (Score:1)
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Re: It can work for MANY typical users. (Score:2)
Student laptops get broken, stolen, vandalized, etc.. and this is where cloud storage is really needed.
Chromebooks are perfect for this, but the drawbacks are Google's data mining, and I don't know if they can be set up where 'the cloud' (for school specific needs) can be entirely hosted on server hardware inside the school building, without even needing to be connected to the internet, just the school's wireless LAN.
Buy and extinguish (Score:2)
Buy and extinguish. Google must maintain control of your computer. It's what they do. It's why they're going into court for endemic trust making activity.
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Nothing different from Microsoft really. Google do seem to have embraced their EEE model and are taking it to new levels.
I want nothing to do with either scumbag company but sadly this is next to impossible these days.
Right. Google always had Microsoft envy right from the beginning. We all know that ends in a monkey dance.
Repost from 12/16 (Score:2)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
A sudden death (Score:2)
And how long before Google decides to shutter "CloudReady OS" leaving a bunch of people in the lurch?
Either commit to supporting the project for some time (i.e. 10 years) or commit to converting it to open source when you no longer want to play with it.
As has been said before, Google has a long, long history of creating a service, getting people to use it, and then unceremoniously dumping it whenever they get tired of it.
https://killedbygoogle.com/ [killedbygoogle.com]
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They would be no more in the lurch than they are now with their useless old hardware. And give the potentially large installed base, there would be every incentive for someone else to pick it up and keep it going - as long as what's on there remains open source. I guess that's a big 'as long as', if they're talking about Android app support too...
This headline it literally too retarded to live. (Score:2)
"Turns ... into"
Intalling an OS is some strange special magic to you now??
Who the fuck lets you post artices on Slashdot??
Go back to AOL or whatever is the current equivalent of that!
Re: This headline it literally too retarded to liv (Score:2)
Ahhh, AOL. Where the tykes would hold their little planned 'riots' by "IM bombing" and chat room 'scrolling' because they needed to get their rocks off.
I remember those days.
I Wish (Score:1)
I wish my old, unsupported, Chromebook could be a Chromebook
Antitrust not quick enuf (Score:1)
How long will it take for Gobble to make them disappear.
So, Linux? (Score:3)
So, they're installing a version of Linux? I do that for free....
Not 'just' Linux... (Score:1)