Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

The problem with this is the great deal of uncertainty about when (if ever) the 'optimal' outcome of the commitment will occur. It's not just a matter of application availability as the author seems to imply.

Even if CloudPhotoShop and CloudEmacs materialized tomorrow, until there is ubiquitous high-bandwidth connectivity, most users will want to continue to make lots of fine-grained choices about what particular bits of their data they want stored locally, remotely, remotely-with-local-cache, etc. There's no way for my CloudApps to know in advance that tomorrow I'll be on a 15 hour flight so I'd like to have these 2 movies, 10 playlists and the latest versions of a couple of Cloudocuments I last edited from a different machine in my local storage before I lose connectivity.

Re: Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

#5

Post by ippisl » Mon, Dec 28, 2009, 4:28 PM UTC

The big problem with the cloud is that it moves power from the user of the software , to the cloud vendor.

so google chrome might be a bad commitment.

I believe we as users need to find a better way to get the benefits of the cloud(in maintenance and availability) ,without losing control of our software.

Re: Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

#6

Post by mmastrac » Mon, Dec 28, 2009, 4:43 PM UTC

pvg wrote: post #4

The problem with this is the great deal of uncertainty about when (if ever) the 'optimal' outcome of the commitment will occur. It's not just a matter of application availability as the author seems to imply. Even if CloudPhotoShop and CloudEmacs materialized tomorrow, until there is ubiquitous high-bandwidth connectivity, most users will want to continue to make lots of fine-grained choices about what particular bit…

Storage is cheap though, so this only becomes an issue when you want to cache gigabyte sized movies. Why not cache your whole photo and music collection now? In 10 years you won't even worry about huge videos. You'll be carting around terabyte sized flash in your phone and more on your cloudbook SSD.

Re: Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

#7

Post by kristiandupont » Mon, Dec 28, 2009, 5:01 PM UTC

zyb09 wrote: post #2

Don't be too short sighted! Cloud hosted version of Grand Theft Auto running in your Webbrowser on Chrome OS coming within the next 5 years!

It's in beta: http://www.onlive.com/

Re: Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

#8

Post by pvg » Mon, Dec 28, 2009, 5:02 PM UTC

mmastrac wrote: post #6

pvg wrote: post #4

The problem with this is the great deal of uncertainty about when (if ever) the 'optimal' outcome of the commitment will occur. It's not just a matter of application availability as the author seems to imply. Even if CloudPhotoShop and CloudEmacs materialized tomorrow, until there is ubiquitous high-bandwidth connectivity, most users will want to continue to make lots of fine-grained choices about what particular bit…

Storage is cheap though, so this only becomes an issue when you want to cache gigabyte sized movies. Why not cache your whole photo and music collection now? In 10 years you won't even worry about huge videos. You'll be carting around terabyte sized flash in your phone and more on your cloudbook SSD.

Because there is no user-controlled local storage under ChromeOS, at least as described now. But even if there was, no matter how much local storage you have (and the assumption is that you'll have more on the cloud and your cloud dataset size will be larger than local storage) you'll still want to make explicit storage decisions based on the availability of bandwidth and connectivity.

Say today at the office I worked on a few documents, shot a gig of video at the office holiday party, bought a couple of mp3s. All were stored on the cloud. Tomorrow morning I, before I leave for a disconnected mountain cabin, I fire up my netbook and tell it to sync. I don't have time to wait around for the video but I specifically want the docs and the mp3s. Additionally, I want an explicit sync of a group of documents from two years ago. They're in the cloud but I have no idea whether they are in the netbook cache so I want an explicit check. The only way you'd stop doing this sort of thing is if you're more-or-less always connected.

Re: Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

#9

Post by jsz0 » Mon, Dec 28, 2009, 5:11 PM UTC

Is anyone actually willing to make that commitment right now?

Re: Google's Chrome OS is a Commitment Mechanism

#10

Post by oliveoil » Mon, Dec 28, 2009, 5:20 PM UTC

The most useful piece of information in this article, to me, was the concept of 'commitment mechanism'.