This morning at a press briefing at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google gave an update on its progress with its open-source operating system for portable web-enabled devices, specifically netbooks. The Linux-based system was announced in July as an extension of the company's Chrome web browsing software, which has seen significant growth in popularity since it launched last September. In terms of the user interface, Chrome OS closely resembles the Chrome web browser, although Google was careful to emphasize that much of what they showed this afternoon is likely to change before its official release next year. In the demo shown today, application and file windows were displayed in tabs, much like a web browser. The applications show in the OS dropdown ranged from basic word processors and calendar apps to specialized web outlets, like Hulu and Facebook.
The foundations of the Chrome OS are almost entirely cloud-based, or in other words, located remotely on dedicated servers. All applications in the Chrome OS are categorized as web apps, but programs in the Chrome OS use the next generation of HTML coding, HTML 5, which allows more streamlined access and dependence on localized files (data stored on a machine) for web-based applications. Google's emphasis on web-connected in the Chrome OS is just yet another avenue for the company's clearly established Cloud computing initiative, which the company is also pursuing in Google Wave.
With such a strong emphasis on constant web connectivity, concerns about the security of the Chrome OS have been raised and Google has answered, explaining that each app is heavily compartmentalized and any malware that infects a certain app, its difficult for it to spill into other areas of the system. Google also claims that the operating system evaluates its own code integrity upon every boot up, and if a problem is discovered, has integrated repair processes.
As a result of the cloud-based nature of the Chrome OS, speed is key. Google is removing every nonessential process from the operating system, allowing users to hop into web apps and web browsing within seconds. To ensure a streamlined experience, Google is establishing hardware benchmarks for future Chrome OS enabled machines, one requirement of which is solid state memory. Google will not support standard hard drive technology with the Chrome OS, but rather will integrate solely with solid state storage (solid state drives, flash memory, etc.). Because of Google's stringent hardware requirements, the Chrome OS will only be available on select devices, meaning it likely won't be an upgradable solution for your current machine.
As far as the release of the Chrome OS is concerned, Google is being pretty vague at the moment, stating that the system will be ready for users next year. In the meantime, Google has already made the source code for the Chrome OS available for the open-source community, third-party developers, and software partners.
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The foundations of the Chrome OS are almost entirely cloud-based, or in other words, located remotely on dedicated servers. All applications in the Chrome OS are categorized as web apps, but programs in the Chrome OS use the next generation of HTML coding, HTML 5, which allows more streamlined access and dependence on localized files (data stored on a machine) for web-based applications. Google's emphasis on web-connected in the Chrome OS is just yet another avenue for the company's clearly established Cloud computing initiative, which the company is also pursuing in Google Wave.
With such a strong emphasis on constant web connectivity, concerns about the security of the Chrome OS have been raised and Google has answered, explaining that each app is heavily compartmentalized and any malware that infects a certain app, its difficult for it to spill into other areas of the system. Google also claims that the operating system evaluates its own code integrity upon every boot up, and if a problem is discovered, has integrated repair processes.
As a result of the cloud-based nature of the Chrome OS, speed is key. Google is removing every nonessential process from the operating system, allowing users to hop into web apps and web browsing within seconds. To ensure a streamlined experience, Google is establishing hardware benchmarks for future Chrome OS enabled machines, one requirement of which is solid state memory. Google will not support standard hard drive technology with the Chrome OS, but rather will integrate solely with solid state storage (solid state drives, flash memory, etc.). Because of Google's stringent hardware requirements, the Chrome OS will only be available on select devices, meaning it likely won't be an upgradable solution for your current machine.
As far as the release of the Chrome OS is concerned, Google is being pretty vague at the moment, stating that the system will be ready for users next year. In the meantime, Google has already made the source code for the Chrome OS available for the open-source community, third-party developers, and software partners.
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