Google Chrome OS: Five Pros And Five Cons

Eric Lundquist eWEEK USA 2014. Ziff Davis Enterprise Inc. All Rights Reserved.,

How will Google’s Chrome operating system compete with the likes of Microsoft? Eric Lundquist lists five reasons why the Chrome OS is a big deal, and five reasons why it isn’t

Five Reasons Why Google Chrome Operating System Is a Big Deal

  1. Hello? It is an operating system. And the vendor that controls the operating system controls the application stack and can win the hearts and minds of developers by giving them a way to make money for their code pounding.
  2. The Chrome operating system provides a critical bridge between Web 2.0 applications sitting in the cloud and a beefed-up browser. The entrance of Google into the operating system business closes the loop between online, offline, cloud-based applications and mobile applications.
  3. Google’s Chrome browser is a really good browser. I’ve been using Chrome along with the new Opera browser and I’m telling you the new browsers are remarkable for stability.
  4. The Chrome operating system doesn’t have to be a success. As long as it can play nicely with other open-source operating systems such as Ubuntu and Intel’s Mobilin, then the Chrome operating system can be a nice little thorn in Microsoft’s side. On the other hand, of course, Windows 7 really needs to be a big success.
  5. The Chrome operating system is only part of the Google game. The Google Wave shared-resource system still in development will be a bigger deal than the Chrome operating system, but just like the Microsoft competition, the more you can make all the parts work flawlessly together the stronger you are.

Five Reasons Why Google Chrome Operating System Is No Big Deal

  1. Google makes its money sticking ads next to search results and has yet to show it can reach beyond that model.
  2. Operating systems from Ubuntu and Red Hat are way ahead of anything Google can do. Those companies (yes, along with Microsoft and Apple) have shown they can court developers and provide solid operating systems. You really don’t need another one in the game.
  3. Hardware suppliers control the operating system business. They cut deals with the software suppliers for co-op advertising dollars and push products based on those deals. I don’t expect to see a lot of co-op dollars coming from Google to, say, a Dell (absent from the list of hardware supporters so far).
  4. The mobile, netbook and desktop operating system business is not going to roll over for Google. The big Asian vendors are going to end up in control of the netbook and mobile operating system business.
  5. The entire operating system business is getting virtualised. No one is going to really know or care what system is running on their hardware.