In December of 2008, Google introduced their contribution to the browser wars, Google Chrome. There’s also been a push for several years now toward online versions of the desktop applications you’re used to using every day when you’re not surfing the Web. One of the more successful has been Google Docs.
One of the biggest objections I’ve personally had against moving to an online platform for every day office work, has been the idea of storing documents on Google’s servers rather than my own machine. This actually has several advantages as well as disadvantages. It would protect my documents against my hardware being destroyed or stolen, make upgrading my hardware easier, and make it easier to access things from anywhere I happened to be working. However, there’s always the chance that I wouldn’t have an Internet connection (either from home or away) and I’m not convinced yet that my documents would be as or more safe and secure on someone else’s server.
What’s making things really interesting now, is that Google is looking to create the first widely used Web based operating system, to compete with Windows and the Apple OS.
“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.” – Google’s blog post on July 7th
The obvious advantage in this for Google is that the more time people spend online, the more often they’ll be searching for things. So with a suite of applications, a Web browser, and now an operating system, Google is lining up to create the sort of monopoly previously enjoyed mostly by Microsoft.
Ignoring the negatives, there’s plenty to be excited about in a centralized data system if it can be made to be reliable, secure and accessible from anywhere. Website design was given a boost with XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets, and the concept of separating the “style” of a page from the “content” of the page. It allowed a more powerful approach to creating pages, and made updating and editing a much easier and quicker task. If we can separate computers from software in the same way, we might see the same type of boost in productivity.
In any case, the next few years will be interesting to watch.
