This is best explained through example, so let’s take Mr Hip and Trendy who are well versed in navigating Facebook for their friends, Flickr or Picasa for their latest photo albums, Last.FM for the music, iTunes for their personal collection, YouTube for cats doing funny things and Twitter for trying to up their cool. Now let’s take away the Hip and Trendy part of all that and leave us with somebody who wants to do things their own way.

We have a neatly categorised library of music and video files on our home computer, and a few re-encoded video files on a remote server specifically made for mobile viewing. None of this iTunes schrwap. We run a shoutcast service for streaming, easily accessible through dyndns. Our latest photo albums, ebook library, and latest LaTeX-compiled (to pdf) essays are neatly stored on our home computer, all tagged as necessary for Nepomuk, and mirrored to the remote server. We have a similarly synchronised set of .ical files for calendars and appointments, and vcards for contact information, and of course mail is on our very own setup on our server. As for social networking, an own-hosted modded WordPress install is used for (micro)blogging. We don’t mind a little Facebook here and there, but would also love to be kept connected on IRC. Of course it’s a-given that our remote server(s) are all equipped with (S)FTP, SSH, and Webdav support.

I don’t know much about the current state of smartphones but perhaps for those that do – can I bend it to use what I use and still feel a decent sense of integration? With this I mean drag-and-drop transfers for files and multimedia, seamless switching between local and remote locations (with support for above protocols), directory synchronisation (rsync?), PIM synchronisation as necessary for ical/vcard/mail/rss with a custom and remote location (or at least importing), and perhaps clients available (terminal emulation, anyone?) for SSH, IRC, and streaming.

Can I actually use my services the way I want them on a smartphone in this day and age?

I know I’ve had somewhat limited success on my own aging Windows Mobile phone, with third-party apps accomplishing iCal sync, SSH (putty), IRC, mail and RSS, and luckily it isn’t tied to nonsense like iTunes when I want to transfer music over. However the rest of the long-dead OS shove these few glimmers of freedom away in a dark and dusty corner of the market. I quite honestly wonder how the rest is doing – so I ask again:

Is it possible?

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Chrome OS is Google’s attempt at an operating system, and can be described as a browser in a box. It looks identical to its namesake and contains little more. The interface is simply a browser window with tabs for separate “applications”, it’s applications are naught more than websites (or in true 2.0 lingo – “web apps”), and just to ensure that the user is limited as to what they can do, the filesystem is read-only. In other words – the Chrome is good for one thing and one thing only: surfing the web.

Why then, with statistics showing internet usage globally leveling out and laptops being introduced to more and more children, would a generation understanding the capabilities of machines be content with such a handicap as Chrome OS? It’s known that “simple sells”, but too simple?

The answer lies with the market that Chrome OS is truly aiming at: SMEs. With the Go Google initiative the next step is to provide the hardware that supports it. Most uses of a laptop in corporate environments are limited to document processing and web research. Given that they choose the specs of the computers, Chrome OS is able to provide this at a bargain. So when management has to give Joe down at accounting a laptop for his work, he doesn’t need to bother about licensing, cost, endless software debugging and maintenance – but simply throw (yep, SSDs!) a Chrome laptop at him. Data redundancy, “software” upgrades and whatever else the cloud brings is an added bonus. Yeah – it’s not a hard choice. It’s cheaper, gets the job done, and it truly is a “work” laptop.

The objective isn’t to throw it into the market as a whole or start from the housewives and grandparents with such a simple laptop but instead the objective is to turn it into an industry standard – an industry standard that works best when companies have Gone Google. Most SMEs don’t care about the drawbacks of using a cloud-based system either – this makes the costs of moving to such a standard minimal. Both sides win. This approach into the market is only one that Google can employ – and is the reason why Chrome OS can break in successfully compared to others like Moblin, even though Moblin has the same simplicity and speed.

Then of course some of the less computer literate (which is the majority of the world, unless you live under a rock) don’t mind using it either. Chrome OS makes the netbook what it should be – a netbook, and schwoop we have another player in the market. In a nutshell. The trick behind this is the frictional costs. The frictional costs of moving to such a system is minimal. I say this as a relative term in comparison to the costs of switching from a cloud-based system.

The conclusion is not that Chrome OS is going to take over the OS market. No – especially in large firms the costs of moving to such a system is unquestionable. However this approach will definitely break the barrier between lightweight computer users and Linux-based OSes. Whether or not this is a good thing for existing Linux platforms is still unknown and free for speculation.

Of course, in the future when our needs for computers far exceed this, Chrome OS is definitely not the choice for that generation – but then again, Google has plenty of time to work towards that!

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Now is the time to see what exactly is going on.

My feelings in a nutshell

• Would I buy such a product? If it were cheap (100 dollars or so), yes.
• I feel Google is harming open-source.
• Cloud computing is very important to me for accessibility and synchronisation.
• We cannot fight, and should not fight.

The story behind it

The first point is easy to justify and I do believe this is very agreeable. This is an area of the markt people have always looked towards with an expectation of a “trustworthy” brand, and Google has just provided that to them. People will buy for this OS.

To a company, Google is probably executing its marketing strategy in the most effective way possible. They use a product-orientated approach, making the product first then selling it to the market – or so it seems. Google knows two things: 1) They have craploads of data, and 2) They own (pretty much) the biggest mass marketing device in the world. However they do know that even though they “own” this realm, they cannot control it. It’s like a pet – you own but cannot control it.

They way you control it is by feeding it. Such is the nature of open-source development. However Google is able to turn open-source into money by producing a good percentage of the product before open-sourcing it. This allows Google to keep the leash on the project. You developers aren’t building the product side by side – no: you are doing the grunt work that turns a framework into something consumers will love – something with the name Google slapped onto it.

Let’s move onto my third feeling. This is because of a trend I have noticed over time. Computers is no longer about being in full control of your data – it’s about being in full control of your data no matter where you are. Cloud computing sorts this out – it’s no wonder Google’s objective is “to be the hub through which all the world’s information passes through“. Sorry guys, but the fact is that most consumers want this. The only time they won’t is when the company providing it has a bad reputation – but Google? No, Google’s never been evil have they? Not to the average joe they haven’t. It’s the average joe that changes the workflow – it’s the average joe that makes such a way of working part of your daily routine.

You see, Chrome isn’t about making an operating system to do useful stuff – Chrome is all about changing people’s workflow to become web-centric. Instead of moving into the desktop market, what Google is doing is moving consumers into the web market.  Why do you think it’s named Chrome after their browser? It saves on the advertising costs. You advertise the OS, you advertise the browser. Google is pushing ahead HTML 5 specifications to redefine what the web is capable of, and their browser Chrome going to be the biggest, baddest boy in the playground that knows the meaning of the word “compatibility” backwards. Advertise them both at the same time – what you get are people getting the “wow” experience Google can provide with all its toolkits online from the browser, and making it easy as pie to integrate it into how they work. It’s not because Google Docs is simply an application that allows you to edit documents online, it’s because it’s a shared, accessible, compatible, synchronised alternative.

We cannot and should not fight.

Yes. My last point is so awesome it deserves its own special section.

You cannot fight once a market leader has made a choice on a product/system. We saw it with Windows and we may very well see it again. (I assume you have all seen Google Wave?) Instead we have to understand the market. What does the market want? How do we provide for it?

Now, I am a KDE user myself but what I see as major areas for Linux and DEs in general to focus on are:

• Plasmoids (in KDE at least) – this is a stepping stone to integrate new technologies and the web into the desktop workflow
• Provision of private clouds, complying with open-standards – for private, secure and PERSONALISED (imagine giving users the freedom to shape their cloud environment) mobility and synchronisation
• The social desktop
• The semantic desktop

Am I right, am I crazy, have I missed out stuff?

Shower me with your thoughts please.

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That’s right, my conspiracy theory about Google (orignally posted a good month back) has come true, and it’s going to be out there around late 2010.

Brief summary: Google is making an operating system (Linux-based too) with help from the open-source community that focuses on getting the user online and into a browser as quick as possible. The browser is now the ultimate tool on the system. It is currently mainly meant for stuff like netbooks (note this is a separate project from Google Android) but will apparently also be able to provide a good experience for any desktop setup.

Since it’s too late to grimace at Google during their drawing board sessions, I like to ask myself what would an OS be in a time when many of our activites are web-centric.

Most of the main problems I outlined for Google in my conspiracy theory was how they could convice people to change their workflows. Apparently Google has decided to give them an operating system. This interface can easily be optimised to make it feel natural to shift their workflow completely into what they can do in a browser, some tabs and the new shabang HTML 5 will come with.

I took a look at Moblin, another netbook Linux-based OS – one thing instantly popped through my head: this doesn’t look like any window manager, it looks like a website or single application. Something you might expect similar to MythTV. (If I am wrong please correct me).

The first decision I would make on designing a UI for Google’s purposes is not to have any start menu. Something similar to Apple’s dock with modifications (also with an auto-hide) would be great for optimising screen real estate. I would also integrate what I now see as KDE Plasmoids as part of the entire interface (as in within applications itself too instead of only the desktop shell). I would also ask myself what applications could be and should be replaced by web applications. Such examples are email, document editing, chatting, and social networking. What could not and should not be are graphics and multimedia editors, games, and system management tools. It seems very much now that we can split our activities into 2: if you want to make technology, do it offline. If you want to use technology, do it online.

Personally, I can easily now see how easily I can adapt my workflow to this internet-centric pattern.

What about you? What do you expect from Google’s OS?

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