It’s been a couple of days now since Google shared their new Chrome OS with the world, and I’m still unsure with how I feel about it. Google confirmed all the gossip prior to the release about Chrome OS being a cloud based operating system. In fact, the whole OS is set up right inside their Chrome web browser. This means everything from your documents and videos to your web apps and games will operate from inside the browser. I don’t know how I feel about this. The Chrome browser is basic and lightweight, and so it’s appearance. Sure they’ve recently added support for skins, but the overall feel of the browser isn’t complete. Doing everything inside of something as blah as Chrome kind of frightens me. Yeah I know Chrome OS will be heading to netbooks, and the whole point of netbooks are to be light weight and fast, but seriously, I don’t know if I’d be able to handle being trapped inside a browser the entire time I was on my computer.

The projected launch date for Chrome OS is sometime towards the end of 2010, so there are still a ton of details that Google is trying to work out, but one thing I’m curious about is how much online space you will be given with the purchase of the OS. I imagine it will come with a flat rate of say 10gb’s of online storage, with options to upgrade to anything higher. It’s true that by keeping files off of the hard drive, it will create a faster computer experience, but this could start to stress our cable and DSL systems. If everyone is saving massive files onto the web, the cloud could clog the bandwidth and make it counter-productive by actually slowing the computer down. This is my main concern about the shift to cloud-based computing.

I read an article in the Economist last month following the release of Windows 7 that talked about the future of operating systems. They project that all operating systems will be cloud base, and the concept of a personal computer will vanish. Any computer at any time will be able to access all of your information, from anywhere in the world. This is the beauty of the cloud. For accessibility and practicality’s sake it makes sense, but before these changes can be implemented, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Linux all need to come together and work out and arrangement with the cable and DSL providers in order to ensure that the proper infrastructure is in place to deal with this new thought. This includes not only faster connections capable of instantly saving massive files to the cloud, but also a Wi-Fi or 4G network allowing anyone to access the internet from anywhere. Until that happens, I don’t think cloud only computing is a practical idea.

Blue