Last week Google finally got around to announcing what we’ve all been expecting since the launch of the Google Chrome browser — the Google Chrome Operating System. No surprise, really, the hints were there in the generous use of operating system terminology (Process Manager, Address Space, Garbage Collector etc) to describe browser features. No surprise either given Google’s historic focus on developing and delivering new services over the web. You’re using GMail for your email and calendar, you use Google Apps for your office applications, you use Picasa to touch-up your photos and you browse the web using Google Chrome; what do you need a full-featured local OS for when you can do everything via the browser? The temptation proved too strong for Google to resist and the result is now here, essentially a Linux kernel with a user interfaced based on the Google Chrome browser.
Google isn’t the first company to develop a solution of this type, and examples such as Good OS or jolicloud are worth taking a look at. The difference, of course, is that when Google has the resources and the clout to really impact the market.
So how does the commonIT team view this? Well, you can tell we’re not surprised. In practice this is one more sign that we’re merely at the beginning of a revolution in IT systems architectures, with the re-centralization of applications and data, accessed via the browser. As far as we’re concerned where there’s change, there are opportunities; but we’ll talk about that some other time 
Tags: Google Chrome
