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Introducing the Google Chrome OS

googleblog.blogspot.com

131–140 of 180 posts

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#131
post #123

I couldn't help thinking about the crunchpad when I read this. Slap this on a tablet with a hybrid display and you might have something very interesting.

Slap a Pixel Qi [1] screen and a capacitive (iPhone) touchscreen on a Crunchpad and I at least will line up for one. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oawX3wenxNc&feature=relat...

I thought it already was planned to be capacitive: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/04/10/crunchpad.apr....

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#132
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google knows who my friends are (Contacts), what I'm saying to them (Gchat/Gmail), where I'm going (Gmaps), what I'm reading (Reader), what I'm writing (Docs) and what I'm looking for (Search). As far as I'm concerned, operating systems are pretty interchangeable. The things I care about are already all going through Google. Does anyone besides Google offer a similar suite of apps? The only one I can think of is Appl…

How about Outlook/Thunderbird/Facebook (contacts) + Yahoo (mail) + OpenStreetMap (maps) + Sage/Friendfeed (RSS) + Zoho (Docs) + Bing (Search)? While no-one may be offering a similar suite of applications, if you want to use them you can find different services that do. Also currently even if google does know all that information about you, it doesn't know what files you have on your hard drive. In my opinion, giving…

The value of Google's services, at least for me, is that they all work together. I can login from an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere and have all my contacts in my email program, the same ones synced to my iPhone.

I don't know if I buy the claim that Google doesn't give "two hoots" about your privacy, as long as you don't count selling contextual ads as over the line. But anyway, my point is that the "files" I care about protecting are already with Google. For true protection of your local files, on any operating system, encryption is your only answer.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#133
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Outlook/Thunderbird/Facebook (contacts) + Yahoo (mail) + OpenStreetMap (maps) + Sage/Friendfeed (RSS) + Zoho (Docs) + Bing (Search)? While no-one may be offering a similar suite of applications, if you want to use them you can find different services that do. Also currently even if google does know all that information about you, it doesn't know what files you have on your hard drive. In my opinion, giving…

The value of Google's services, at least for me, is that they all work together. I can login from an internet cafe in the middle of nowhere and have all my contacts in my email program, the same ones synced to my iPhone. I don't know if I buy the claim that Google doesn't give "two hoots" about your privacy, as long as you don't count selling contextual ads as over the line. But anyway, my point is that the "files" I…

I believe with facebook connect, you can maybe hack those different services to work together (firefox extension?). Maybe, I should take a look at that idea.

And if google did care about my privacy why read all my mails, and keep track of every webpage i visit from their search engine. I don't buy the "we'll only take a peep, just for advertising" logic.

Also, google already having all the files you care about would be more an exception than the norm. I would presume a majority of people keep their files stored on their hard drives.

In my opinion, keeping track of my actions in any way goes against google's self stated "don't be evil" policy. Or did Paul Buchheit take that policy with him to friendfeed???

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#134
post #66

I'm not sure if I like implications of a web-centric OS, especially when its producer is as rich and powerful as Google. I see the market for it, and I think it will be a huge benefit for the average user. However, I see the transition from desktop-based software to web-based as a loss of user control. Today, when governments decide that mp3 sharing, porn, articles of political dissent, or news from non-national sour…

Can I call alarmist bullshit? I think the inevitable consequence of fears like yours is that you'll be able to pay different institutions, so that you can store part of your data here, and part of your data there. So that you can surf behind company A's proxy most of the time but use company B's when you feel like/need to. Yes, there are going to be less entities on the whole. But if the internet keeps growing, that…

I agree that we have different options. We don't HAVE to choose Google, just as we didn't have to choose Windows; it was just the easiest/most convenient/accessible/popular way to go and so most people do it. Also, I'm sure more systems will be created that are designed to protect our data, as you say, though all you're doing is putting your trust in Corporation B over Corporation A.

Constitutional rights? Right to privacy? The government can listen in on any phone conversation they want (wire, cell, voip...), read any e-mail that gets sent, break into your home if they would like, et cetera. What rights do we have exactly?

Power corrupts. It's human nature. Your trust in the government to not abuse its' power is scary to me.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#135
post #59
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to re-think what is meant by an "operating system". What is Windows? It's that thing, in the background, that lets you run all the applications you want to run. But what if all your applications were written in Javascript and HTML, and had URLs instead of .exe files? With all the extra power built into Chrome, they could still write to file systems, store data, work offline, do sophisticated graphics and par…

When the iphone was first released, development was going to be via javascript and safari. That didn't go too well with neither users nor developers. Isn't this going to be the same thing? And for the so called windowing system I would not hold my breath and except anything like quartz. Its probably going to be just enough framebuffer code to drop X11 so the browser window can run in fullscreen. The window manager wi…

That's a common misconception.

When the iPhone was first released, development was restricted to web apps and they didn't have access to any API. The fact that it was javascript and HTML was mostly tangential to the complaints of people who wanted to install (and sell) local apps, with access to the unique hardware, though obviously existing Cocoa coders, 3D game programmers and anyone needing to get close to the metal weren't going to be happy even if these other elements were taken care of.

On the other hand "fart apps" and things that are basically light wrappers round existing web apps have no such problem.

See the Palm Pre for someone taking this to it's logical extreme.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#136
post #58
post #5

Let's hope this also means that a Linux version of Chrome is around the corner.

Chrome wasn't built in a day. Though you'd think if they're announcing a linux-based operating system, centered on their web-browser, making their web-browser run on linux would be trivial. OTOH, could it be the diversity of linux distributions that's making it difficult for them?

They have been working on the linux port for only 9 months porting what was essentially a native windows application written in Visual Studio. The fact that they got this far this fast shows that they have a pretty good team.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#137
post #67

If ARM and x86 are targeted, this means no Flash (not surprising, given how poorly it runs on Linux), which presumably means YouTube will be operating in full-on HTML 5 video mode by the time these devices launch. If netbooks continue their meteoric ascent, and if Chrome OS grabs a significant share of the market, we may finally see the realization of the mythical Year of Linux On the Desktop. The ironic aspect, of c…

OS 2008 (Maemo Linux on Nokia N8XX tablets) has a port of Flash 9 running on ARM. I doubt it'll take much to get a new version out for Google.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#138
I think Google will continue to "win" and we will use their applications/reader/ecc until they will have the dominant search engine. If you look at what they offer (with the exception, maybe, of excel-like webapp), they are not killer application. We are using them because our online-life is Google-centric. So we should remeber that everything else they do is buld on their search engine dominance (think to the omnibox)... For the webos is the same. It's fine, for a netbook IF Google will remain Google.

If you look at what people do with a Mac, they do far more than just using web application. Far Far more.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#139
post #66

I'm not sure if I like implications of a web-centric OS, especially when its producer is as rich and powerful as Google. I see the market for it, and I think it will be a huge benefit for the average user. However, I see the transition from desktop-based software to web-based as a loss of user control. Today, when governments decide that mp3 sharing, porn, articles of political dissent, or news from non-national sour…

I concur. I've become more and more aware of the looming Google benevolent giant, but one day that giant's going to get angry and by that point it may be too late. That being said, I still use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Analytics, and other services. So I'm not exactly avoiding the apocalypse here.

I don't think this is a matter of 'if' but 'when'.

Already governments are openly leaning on google to get it to do their bidding, who knows what is happening behind the scenes.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#140
post #93
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash has a few small problems on Linux, but generally is usable.

Problems like crashing my browsers 10x a week, and using 50x the CPU that mplayer uses to play the same video.

Running it using nspluginwrapper seems to make it so that when Flash crashes, it doesn't take Firefox down with it.

I regularly killall npviewer.bin too, when Flash is hung or doing something weird. Reload the page and it restarts.

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