Google Chrome OS

[z3r010]

It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

 

[petrossa]

grinds to a halt in after a few minutes Virtual Box It does look nice though. Very much like a children's playground.

 

[z3r010]

grinds to a halt in after a few minutes Virtual Box It does look nice though. Very much like a children's playground.

You have it? have I missed a download link?

 

[fahric]

Chrome OS

where is the link for download?thanks

 

[petrossa]

You have it? have I missed a download link?

it's well hidden:Good OS - gOS and Cloud operating systems

i've understood that this will be it's appearance, google gadgets + google bar

 

[Lee]

The to be new Google Chrome OS and gOS are two completely different OSs. The Google Chrome OS has yet to be put out even in an "alpha." For some reason people are confusing the two, don't.

Been reading a great deal of the information being put out on the new Chrome OS, and as most of us know it will be based on the Linux kernel. It's actual release to the general public won't be until the second half of 2010. This probably means the "beta" should be out sometime around the end of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010.

At present it would appear not to be something that MS or Apple has to worry about, however, it would not be surprising to see Google working toward getting a better foot hold on the OS market sometime in the next five years. And, yes they are looking at netbooks first, however, Google has made it plain they are also going to place Chrome OS on laptops and desktops.

It has be taken into consideration that once in the beta a great deal of the "Geek Community" will be downloading and testing to see if this new upstart is going to make the grade (I am sure I will play around with the new OS).

 

[Brand]

Although Chrome is a good browser, my current favorite is IE 8, which is much better than its previous versions, done with the memory leaks, Yeah!

 

[burtie]

Intresting....i cant wait to try it out....whenever that will be!

 

[ten]

Sounds like it's gonna blow all the other OSs out of the water in terms of performance. It will be cloud computing though.

 

[7Dreams]

guess we need a Chromeforums.... now.

 

[Legacy Code]

Just another *nix distro .
Good OS - gOS and Cloud operating systems

Android will be better i think as that will be a real OS and not Cloud based ( Cloud = No interenet No OS.)

 

[z3r010]

guess we need a Chromeforums.... now.

I'm on to it - www.thechromeosforums.com

 

[mxosder16]

I'm on it - www.thechromeosforums.com

I'm a member

 

[septprince]

Just registered. It looks great and shiny as Mr GRiM said.

 

[petrossa]

The to be new Google Chrome OS and gOS are two completely different OSs. The Google Chrome OS has yet to be put out even in an "alpha." For some reason people are confusing the two, don't.

Sorry Mr Lee, i promise i won't

 

[Scooter70]

I'm on to it - www.thechromeosforums.com

Ok... I registered too.

 

[G2gCya]

well, guess i have to do dual boot for Windows 7 and Google chrome OS

 

[John Henry]

What do you expect from google os? I think it gonna be a fault. They are running too much instead of going slowly and smoothly.

 

[G2gCya]

What do you expect from google os? I think it gonna be a fault. They are running too much instead of going slowly and smoothly.

haha, it's alright, i love to try new stuff, no harm too provided that it's free

 

[fakeasdf]

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

I love the ideas, but many of them are impractical with our current internet infrastructure. Even more so, peoples computers are still going to need to be configured to their respective hardware regardless of the OS. Windows, Mac, *nix all have to configure their computer for their hardware. People's computers will always run slower when they do more. It's how CPU's and schedulers work, the more they need to do, the more they need to context switch and take away CPU time from one process to another... If everything ran server side then we have to wait for response from server, definitely slower than response time from your own machine. They've made a ton of claims with little ability to truly implement it all I better download and install it though, just cause I have nothing better to do... Maybe on a netbook since they are mostly internet machines anyway, but it still promised things such as accessing all your files anywhere, and I doubt most of us have a slew of netbooks that we use as our computers...