Look for an open source Google operating system to be released later this year

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Tue, Jul 07 2009 | 1 Comment

In an attempt to compete with Windows, Google announced an open source operating system for the PC that will be released later this year. The name will go along with the company’s already popular Chrome browser; Chrome OS.

It is intended to be a quick staring OS and the central focus is to support the Chrome browser. Applications will mostly run inside the browser. This will make the web a main component of the operating system; compared to Windows where the “desktop” is the main component of the operating system.

The idea of running applications inside the web browser is called “cloud computing.” Cloud computing is where the computer has a connection to the internet at all times and data is stored “in the cloud” (remotely) and the information processing happens between the browser and remote servers. This is how many applications on the iPhone run.

Chrome OS will be initially meant for netbooks and will begin being installed on new netbooks by the second half of 2010. While it will take that long for computers to already come with the OS built in, the code for Chrome OS will be released under an open source license by the end of 2009.

“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. 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. [...] 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,” said a blog post from Google.

If you look at all the things we already do through the internet browser, like check our email, play on Facebook applications, or listen to Pandora while we’re working, you can easily see how a company would want to get into a project like Google is taking on.

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Microsoft has a lot riding on Windows 7

Tags: open source operating system, web browser, user experience