Google to launch Chrome operating system
Updated on 08 July 2009
The Google Chrome operating system, to be launched in 2010, could revolutionise the software market, writes Benjamin Cohen.
So years of rumours have finally turned into reality. Google will be launching their own PC-based operating system and truly take on Microsoft.
Google Chrome OS will be launched in the second half of next year and could revolutionise the software market.
It claims to be the first operating system built for the age of the web, with many programmes being run via the "cloud", so processing takes place outside of the computer itself. This makes it perfect for netbooks, the slimmed-down laptops currently accounting for more than one in four sales of pcs.
Google has yet to reveal what its revenue stream is, although privacy campaigners will no doubt be concerned that internet giant may wish to make use of the data it collects as part of operating this service.
There is little doubt that advertising will at some point appear within the software. But the initial key benefit for Google will be the software driving more people towards the company's services.
Back in 2006, in a column I wrote for The Times I claimed that Google was working towards something then dubbed a "Google box", a lightweight PC based on a Google operating system, where processing and storage took place outside of your computer and instead on Google's servers.
Although some of the other details within my column have thus far turned out not to be true, much of today's announcement won't surprise many in the tech community as rumours of the project have continued to surface.
But today's announcement is so significant that Ben King of News at Noon said to me: "To the tech world this is a bit like Lord Lucan giving a press conference on top of Shergar."
