www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Geek Hall Google Operating System ?

Now life could get very interesting
The new kid on the block [nytimes.com]

It will be interesting to see what it actually does and what if any are the plusses and minuses to it. The article is interesting but leaves a lot of questions. I would like to see some actual reviews regarding it. If it is anything like Google's Android phone OS, they have a lot of work to do yet from the reviews I have read of that.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Seems to be a bit more info here

next installment [guardian.co.uk]

Interesting. I know Microsoft has developed bing to compete with Google. I have no idea how that's going, since I haven't used it yet. But it looks like the rivalry between MS and Google is heating up.

Charles,

I tried Bing and was not at all impressed with it and switched back to Google after a couple days. As far as the new operating system is concerned, I am interested in software applications it would run when not connected to the internet. If it requires only their apps and the work has to be done online, then I can see some problems for it. The other issue I can foresee is peripheral compatibility.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Bing? I thought they came out with Microsoft Live.

I think that Google may have marginal success if they assure it comes installed on netbooks and sell enough of them to make Microsoft sweat. But I don't know if people will be lining up to replace their desktop OS with Chrome just yet.

Terry

Terry,

You got to get with it. Bing has been out for a few months now. MS Live I believe will be eventually replaced by it.

I happen to agree about your assessment regarding Google's Chrome OS and how it will be received.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

This will be THE single biggest issue for Google. From a business perspective, their attempt to displace Microsoft's Office for business use has been a complete failure for this very reason. Governance, Risk and Compliance issues can't be easily mitigated with Google's online Office equivalent. Any new operating system will have to get over these hurdles and manny many others related to peripheral compatability and integration.

I.F.

I agree with Fr. A. & J.F. Use the example of Open Office. It's nice and all that, and does very well. But one cannot move data between it and Microsoft Office totally seamlessly. Therefore it is, at best, doomed to stay at the tail of the pack. Google - or anyone else - will need total and seamless interoperability with Microsoft Office.

One can even look at the issues involved in simple upgrades within a single system. The company I work for is taking a full year to upgrade people from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Lots of hassles with reminding people using Office 2007 to save files so the people using Office 2003 can use them.

PS: I still like WordPerfect better then MS Word! And I use both daily.

From the different articles I have read tonight concerning the potential release of the Chrome OS, a lot of speculation seems to be taking place that eventually have to be answered and Google seems to be not answering. The first is that it will be open source operating system much like Linux. The next is that it will be "cloud based" or entirely online for its applications, and that is purely speculative. The next is concerning a price is at all charged. the last is that there seems to be a real question regarding when it is going to be released. Some articles have it in the fall of 2010 and others have it as fall 2009.

A lot of questions that need to be addressed. If they are not addressed before release, there may be a lot of disappointments that could lead to issues with its viability as a serous contender. From what I read on most tech forums I belong to, most are not interested in the operating system on the consumer level. That leads to the question, then why is Google considering this and spending the money for its development?

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

I've used MS Word and Excel pretty much since they've come out (and before they were available for DOS).

I've used OpenOffice since fairly early releases of Staroffice.

The biggest interoperability problem between the two office suites has to do with different approaches to page/section formatting: openoffice is page-based, while word is section-based. Aside from that (and even including that), moving between is really no worse than moving between slightly different versions of msoffice (or sometimes, just changing your printer settings). Yes, page break differences happen, but these also happen within msoffice.

The three areas where ms is ahead of openoffice:

1) outline view handling and manipulation
2) mailmerge (openoffice's conditionals are inadequate--but then, ms's version is so far behind what I took a single week to patch into LyX . . .[1])
3) there is no open source grammar checker (I don't think that even StarOffice includes one).

Aside from those, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other.

On the Open/Star Office side, they include limited regular expression find/replace, putting it far ahead of ms when you need to do a sophisticated replace.

Note, however, that this comes from Sun, not Google (though Sun's and Google's interests are clearly aligned here, and Chrome apps could do the same thing for Sun as OpenOffice).

Anyway, as for the google OS itself, it *is* linux derived, with another windowing system.

If you recall back several years ago to MS' attacks on Netscape (it gave up roughly $100M in offered upfront revenue in W95 to instead give IE an edge over netscape), it's fear there was that the browser could replace the operating system. Given that word processing, spreadsheet, web, and email are the overwhelming majority of what most people do with their computer, this is quite a reasonable concern.

Google represents exactly this threat, save with the resources to survive an MS assault. The applications will be essentially browser-based--but they could be stored on the system for offline use.

History says that it will be a matter of days for a variant to come out that would allow the use of existing linux applications. And with google behind it, the handful of companies that still actively obstruct linux drivers for their products will quickly be left in the dust . . .

I have a G1 phone. It's easier to use than Windows, somewhat behind what I've come to expect from FreeBSD or Linux.

hawk

[1] When I had to send otu a couple of hundred semi-customized applications, I realized that it would take less time to modify LyX than to use Word's mailmerge. Not only was I write, but what I wrote was far more functional--more extensive conditional processing, if/then/elseif/else rather than if/then/else, and, most importantly, nested INCLUDe--for crying out loud, when including something in a mailmerge, it's pretty obvious that you continue processing from the *beginning* rather than *end* of what was included (there are similar problems with the formatting of included text in ms word).

It's the difference between $200 and $300 computers. More $200 computers will sell and use google's services. Also, without the MS tie-ins, a larger portion will use google's services.

MS Windows on a consumer device is a middleman taking a huge percentage of the total device price while not providing any real added value (although that's always good work when you can get it :)).

Yes, but is there any guarantee that Google is not going charge for their OS? Like I said earlier, everything posted has been speculative concerning whether it would be free or not. When netbooks were first released and even on a recent price check of various manufacturers, those that had non-Windows operating systems installed, had only a $50 price difference at most. I know, because I carefully was pricing and checking specs before I purchased mine. No matter whether Google charges or not, the manufacturers will not be reducing the cost of their products by much.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

I just read this story as to what hardware manufacturers will be supporting Google Chrome OS.

Link [news.bbc.co.uk]

I find it also interesting that outside of Adobe, none of the other software companies have signed on. Also this for the moment seems to be entirely "cloud based". I know from experience if the computer does not have resident applications, this can be an issue especially in areas with limited or no connectivity to the internet. If they are relying solely on a high speed connection or a 3G one (especially due to the additional costs of that type of connection and limited use in some areas), that also could be discouraging to consumers. Also no mention of manufacturers of printers, etc. that would anticipate supporting their hardware with the new OS.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

It does concern me to a slight degree.

Many of us use Notebooks as 'cart around ' machines - but you need them to do the same things as you do on your home Computer , and on the same printers/scanners etc as you have in your base.

Has Google been forced into announcing their new Browser before they intended to ?

Either they have

or they are sounding us out to see what they really need to do with it .