You got your Google in my OS!

When it comes to buying a computer today, you pretty much have two choices for the Operating System (OS): the heavyweight champ Microsoft’s Windows, or the scrappy underdog Apple’s MacOS X.  (Some people will try and tell you there is a third option called Linux; ignore them. They are nerds and for the most part they are wrong.)

Well, that may soon change, as search giant Google announced Wednesday that they will be releasing their own OS next year.  Called Google Chrome OS, it will be a light-weight OS based on Linux (hey I said the nerds were MOSTLY wrong about it being a third option) and the company’s Chrome web browser.  So does this mean you’ll be picking up your next Dell box with Chrome OS on it by Christmas 2010?  Welllllll, no, probably not.  Chrome OS is going to be targeted, initially at least, for use on netbooks, the small, lightweight sub-laptops that companies such as Acer, Dell and HP have been releasing recently.

Why netbooks?  Well, the Chrome OS isn’t going to be like Windows and MacOS X.  It won’t be a full-fledged OS.  You won’t install normal applications onto your computer, you won’t be editing videos on it, playing games like Halo 3 or Starcraft II, or other intensive tasks.  Chrome OS is going to be designed around using Google’s existing web apps for e-mailing, web browsing, document editing, etc., for fulfilling your basic computer needs.  Google is betting that they can give you a faster and safer experience by cutting out a lot of the high-powered extras and focusing on the lightweight tasks.  This will be especially helpful on netbooks, which are much less powerful than the regular laptops and desktop computers you are used to using.

So will it work?  Maybe, but there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical.  

Computers designed to be lower powered internet devices have been tried before, and well, they’ve pretty much all flopped.  Examples include the 3Com Audrey, Apple’s eMate, and the Palm Foleo.  The first two were actually released for short periods of time; the Foleo, on the other hand, was so ridiculed after Palm announced it that the project was killed before it could see the light of day.  

However, one of the problems for early internet devices like these was the lack of speed and availability of the internet part.  With the increasing availability of WiFi networks and high speed internet in most places, that part of the equation has, at least, improved.

Currently, netbooks are available with Windows XP or various versions of Linux, many of them stripped down versions with limited capabilities mostly targeted towards internet, e-mail, and basic office applications.  Sounds exactly like what Google wants to do, right?  From existing netbooks, we can already see that Google may have an uphill battle on its hands.  Netbook maker MSI released information that models of their netbooks using Linux were returned at a rate 4 times greater than that of the same models using Windows XP.  Some estimates have over 95% of netbooks running a version of Windows (mostly XP).  Customers just don’t seem to be interested in limited capability internet devices, despite their theoretical benefits over fully featured, slower full computers.

So will Chrome OS offer enough capabilities to overcome that consumer viewpoint?  At this point it’s hard to tell.  Google has offered only the barest glimpse into what Chrome OS is going to be.  Certainly it will offer first class support for services such as Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Docs, among others.  Developers will be able to develop web apps that will run on all browsers on all OS’s.  This may be a good thing, and it may be a bad thing.  It’s great in terms of getting people to develop for the platform, but web apps, despite their ever increasing capabilities, are definitely limited.  When Apple first released the iPhone, they told developers that the way to develop for it was to make web apps.  Although some showed up, it wasn’t until Apple gave developers a way to develop directly for the phone that the platform really exploded.  Another limitation that web apps will have is interacting with your external devices.  That may be the biggest hurdle Google faces to adoption.  How do you use your printer, your camera, your music player with a web based system?

That last one may in fact be, for many people, the deal breaker.  Apple’s iPod is the king of media players today.  Just about everyone and their dog has one model of iPod or another.  The free iTunes software Apple gives away for Mac and PC allow for easy syncing with the iPod and competitors release similar software for their devices.  Apple released iTunes for Windows because it had to, if it wanted to reach the majority of users out there.  They won’t have the same incentive to try and release a web based version for the Chrome OS, assuming its even technically possible.  I can’t imagine many consumers will be interested in a device which won’t even be capable of managing and syncing their music to their media player, iPod or otherwise.

Google’s best bet is to try and position Chrome OS devices as companions for users who will have an existing PC for handling tasks like music management, video editing, etc.  Will they be able to convince people that it’s worth it to have a second device?  Its going to be tough, especially with people already able to do much of these with their smart phones like the iPhone, the Palm Pre, and phones based on Google’s own Android OS.  

Speaking of Android, it’s worth pointing out that Google’s existing OS for phones isn’t exactly flying off the shelves.  So far, only a small handful of phones using Android have been released, and they have made little headway against the iPhone, Blackberrys, various Windows Mobile devices and the new Palm Pre.  On top of that, notebook PC’s have been selling at a greater rate than desktop PC’s in recent years.  More and more people are picking them as their primary, sometimes only computer.  If you already have a portable computer, are you likely to buy a second, smaller one?

So despite the adulation you might hear from the geek crowd, Google is going to have a lot of hurdles to overcome if the Chrome OS is going to follow in the footsteps of their successful search engine and ubiquitous g-mail. It’s entirely possible that it will instead stagger and stumble like the Android OS appears to be doing so far.