[geeks] Google announces Google Chrome OS

[Mark Benson]

On 8 Jul 2009, at 07:31, Shannon Hendrix wrote:

> On Jul 8, 2009, at 01:58 , Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
>
>> Bill Bradford wrote:
>>> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
>>
>> Bleh.  The world doesn't need another Linux distribution.

That depends on what they do with it. If they can muster the community  
energy to push Linux forward from where it is today to something more  
akin to OS X in terms of quality (but hopefully not proprietary-ness)  
then it might actually make Linux a viable desktop OS. For all the  
effort so far at places like Canonical and the like nothing has  
arrived that is as polished and as complete as it needs to be. A large  
company with community leverage (and money) like Google could actually  
do it good. On the flip-side it might just be another Linux distro  
that's great except for the 3 bits they forgot to finish, much like  
Ubuntu... the key is you have to give them a chance. Dismiss it when  
it's actually out and it's actually crap.

> ...especially one that spies on its users like they do with their  
> browser.

Google publish a clear privacy policy for Chrome that is easy to find.  
That's already more than most other browser publishers ever do. To be  
honest most of the policy is pretty-much non-scary anyway and it has  
instructions to opt out of some stuff. There is also a big part of it  
that's *opt-in* as I remember when you install Chrome.

You can read it here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en-GB/privacy.html?hl=en-GB

(it took me less than a 5-seconds from loading the site to find that,  
I was skeptical as to if it even was the right privacy policy when I  
found it as it was too easy to find! It's at the bottom of the page in  
a readable font size on the Chrome website)

Why pick on Google alone anyway? Are you sure the other browsers you  
use don't do anything like that? Every used Apple software? What about  
using IE8? Here's one - did you know every webserver you ever use logs  
your IP address and what you accessed? Are you sure every website you  
access is trustworthy too? A large number of pieces of software,  
including browsers, do stuff like that, and what is more they bury and  
obfuscate the privacy policy in a lot of cases so you don't know what  
it's doing without a serious amount of digging, and wrose still they  
don't giver you any options to opt out or in, they just do it.

Picking on Google alone because they use some of the info you transmit  
*all over the internet anyway* to make your browsing more useful and  
add features, and also tell you exactly what it is they are doing  
while they are at it, is hyperbolic FUD.

> Or one from a company that says something like this:
>
> 	"However, the operating systems that browsers run on were
> 	 designed in an era where there was no web."

I agree that's BS, though. Mac OS X alone is directly against that  
statement. It grew up from NeXT which was founded in the late 80s and  
by the early 90s had a network-centric and highly advanced OS. OS X  
itself was developed from 1997 to the present day, launched on 2001  
and hit the big-time in about 2003-2004. If that's not an internet age  
OS I dunno what is? Apple's (admittedly slightly expensive paid-for)  
cloud services (MobileMe) that are integrated at API level in OS X and  
iPhone/iTouch are a fine example of everything Google doesn't think  
OSs have :P

I know it's only one case in point but it's a fairly obvious one.  
There's other stuff out there that has similar features.

They dropped a loose nut there too. I think they meant 'an era when  
there was no *internet*' implying that OS's are not integrated  
directly with internet 'cloud services' seamlessly.

I agree the OS should (and probably can in all major cases) handle  
integration of this nature without too much fuss. If it was a poke at  
Windows specifically then that's just petty, standing poking  
competitors in the eye with a sharp stick just makes you look stupid.

I say give it a chance, it *might* be really good, and it *might* not.

-- 
Mark Benson

My Blog:
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"Never send a human to do a machine's job..."