Chromium OS: Where is Google headed?
Part of what I do for a living is teaching educators on how to use and incorporate a variety of technologies in their classrooms. This include the use of software, such as the popular Adobe and Microsoft products. Increasingly however, Google makes an appearance in my class schedule.
When I teach the use of Google, I tend to discuss (among other products) GMail, Google Docs, Search, and Google Sites. If you haven’t tried any of these, I would highly recommend the creation of an account, as well as some time spent becoming familiar with these promising online products.
So many teachers leave my classes surprised to find out what Google offers, proud of what they have accomplished using these web-based applications. They are excited to discover that their work is created and saved on the Internet, never having to be downloaded to an easily-lost thumb drive, no longer tracking emailed versions of a document sent to a colleague in order to collaborate on a project.
My teachers are now happily creating and publishing online documents and presentations for use by both students and parents. They are sharing these documents with their peers in order to collaborate, real-time, marvelling at how each and every keystroke shows up live. They are learning to seamlessly tie it all together on easily customized classroom web sites.
So, what’s next?
After I tell my teachers what Google has been up to, I ask them how they might use the tools in their own lives and classes. Oh, you should see their minds soar with ideas! Inevitably, they want to know what is next, and I get asked the same questions: Where is Google headed with all of this? How far will this cloud computing concept go?
I have a few ideas about what Google is up to. To gain some perspective, let’s talk for a minute about how your computing experience works right now…
The Kernel
When you boot up your computer each day at the office or home, you start up the electronic underpinnings of your computer. A very small program, called a kernel, begins running a set of files in a predetermined order, running one process then another until these processes take charge of their own accord.
The Operating System
When all of the basic processes are finished, your computer is now running its “operating system.” This is your computer’s base of operations, where you have your desktop, where you choose what programs you want to run. The operating system runs your display, and communicates with your mouse and keyboard. It’s the springboard from which your programs are launched and run.
Personalized Spaces
After starting up, I don’t like to see the Hello Kitty or Sonic the Hedgehog backgrounds my kids discovered how to place on my home computer. I’m not sure when they learned this, but I am pretty sure they figured it out faster than it took me to open my very first box of Strawberry Pop Tarts as a kid. I have different user accounts on my home machine, each with a different environment our family members can customize to their heart’s content.
Where we work tends to be similar in nature, in that many of us have to log into a network, in order to get our personalized desktops and desirable files delivered to us. Log in as someone else, and you get their stuff. And written up for snooping.
After logging in or choosing our profile we can see and choose from our programs, which we start up to perform certain necessary tasks. We can download or purchase more, and arrange icons to get to them as we please on our personal desktop.
You can then, finally, open a web browser and connect yourself to the Web, enjoying the incredible and vast information there….like Google. Or my blog. LOL. Can’t blame a guy for trying…
Moving your computer to the Cloud: Chromium OS
Time to talk about Chromium.
A year ago, Google began to openly talk about a free Google alternative to the pricey Microsoft Windows or Apple operating system. You could download it and dump the other guys. Geeks gathered together and awkwardly danced, as they celebrated the advent of an operating system that wouldn’t put a dent in their little Spiderman wallets. Linux enthusiasts rolled their eyes and asked what the big deal was, since they had been enjoying this for years now. Sheesh.
Yawn. We’re still waiting for Google to provide a stable build of Chromium that even the novice can simply download from a slick website and then install – tossing out the old regime and chortling loudly. What happened, Google? Because I have been keeping that chortle inside for a very long time. I’m chokin’ on this chortle already.
What I think is going to happen
I believe that Google’s semi-release of Chromium was meant to get the more nerdy folks among us to download, install and beta-test their code on their fancy-pants “virtual” machines. To give it a shot and provide some feedback. Google hoped to crowd-source the debugging of its code to people who didn’t mind running it in a bastardized environment. I believe we have never gotten an easily used version of Chromium OS to run, because it was never meant to be installed and run on your computer in the first place. But if we weren’t supposed to install it on our computers, where would Chromium OS go?
Google is going to do to your operating system what it did to your office suite – take it online and make it free. Google is going to move your computer to the Cloud, dudes.
The Google Kernel
Here’s how I think it will work…
Google is going to provide you a kernel of code that you’ll download and install on your existing computer. This little program will replace the part of your computer that runs things. This kernel will replicate many of the processes your computer goes through now in starting itself up.
Your Google kernel will run just enough processes on your machine to startup your display, find your keyboard and mouse, then connect you to the Web and identify your machine to Google’s servers. From there, your virtual and personalized instance of Chromium OS, always running on the Web, will be displayed on your screen, sent to you via a high-speed Internet connection. You will be looking through a virtual window at your new computer, on the Cloud, updated real-time through your every keystroke and mouse movement.
The Online Processor
Today, when you move your computer’s mouse or type in your keyboard, it sends signals to your computer’s internal processor(s,) which then provide feedback to the programs being used and to your display, so you can see the changes and movement. With Chromium OS, Google will move your computer’s “work station” to the Cloud, which will then take over the job of receiving and processing data and sending signals back to your monitor.
The Google Kernel will allow future desktops, laptops and other mobile computing devices to be much more slim-lined, with minimal processing power needed, except to boot up and connect to the Cloud. Storage and processing requirements will be much smaller – however your Internet bandwidth will need to be bigger, and your graphics card faster.
For those of you worried about losing data, Google will likely give you the option to download a mirror-like install of Chromium on your local machine, which will sync with your online OS, in order to maintain a local backup copy to work on. When Google is back online, everything will automatically re-sync for you.
Your Operating System, personalized and “over there” – at a price?
With Chromium, your OS will never again need to be upgraded by you at a cost – when Google upgrades the operating system in its server farm, your instance of the system is automatically upgraded, for free. How will Google afford to maintain and upgrade hundreds of millions of virtual computers in the Cloud? The same way they give you everything else these days – ads.
Chromium will likely be a free service, with some part of the interface serving up Google AdSense and other advertisements – similar to what you see in Google Search. Don’t want the ads? Then pay a monthly or annual service fee to remove them.
With Chromium OS, just as you have on your computer today, you’ll get storage – probably something like 20 GB, with more available to you if you pay an annual subscription. It’s not a big deal, as Google already provides you around 7 GB of storage space for its other free products.
Programs as Apps
All of the programs you see on your machine today provide a variety of functions you have deemed desirable to do what you do in life. Many of these programs you paid a pretty penny for, winked a few times at that nerdy guy in IT to “borrow,” or simply copied from your weird friend who wears that Orange Crush T-shirt way too often. Yes, we know about him. Shame on you.
Tomorrow’s programs will simply be applications (or apps) which reside in the Cloud, and are largely free or far cheaper than what you pay now. You will use Chromium, your online operating system, to access and run these apps on the Cloud, and save your work there, too. Think in terms of what occurs with your iPad or iPhone – you download and use programs that perform a particular function – some are free with limited features, and some you pay for if you need more.
Google already has a burgeoning office suite in its Docs, Calendar and Gmail offerings (which gets better every month they work on it.) Add to this Picasa photo albums with the new PhotoShop-like Piknik editing tool, blogging software from Blogger.com, Google Reader and so many others. Add the myriad of apps being created by Android programmers and placed in their store, and you just might find yourself with everything you already can do, at a fraction of the price, and available 24/7 everywhere in the World.
I would imagine that the folks at Google will also gobble up the best products put forth in its app store, slap their name on it, and have you pay to own an instance of the app with Chromium. Or will provide it free with some ad spots built-in.
Will my device be useless if Google crashes?
Yes. But Google’s servers are historically up and running around 99.96% of the time. This is considered exceptional, and just might beat the amount of time your current PC was down this last year…
How will this work with the Google Tablet?
I believe Chromium OS will roll out sometime after the Google Tablet does, likely around the time the 2nd generation of the device arrives. This will give Google a full year to debug their mobile computing device and its Chromium operating system, and develop a loyal following.
When Chromium OS shifts to the Cloud, people will absolutely freak.
This will utterly crush what people think about computing and computers forever. Think about it. Your operating system follows you, wherever you go, even though it’s not with you. Buy any mobile computing device and as soon as it connects to the Web, you have your computer again – in your classroom, at the pizza joint, on vacation. Everywhere.
If someone steals your tablet or laptop, they won’t know your login credentials, so there is no access to any of your important files. And when you replace your device, simply login to Chromium OS and everything will be as it was before.
The teachers I teach work hard to keep up with how much technology is changing. It’s a difficult task, but full of incredible possibilities. It’s important for them to keep wrapping their brains around the changes, because I believe there are amazing things on the horizon from the people at Google.
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Posted by Steve
on Jul 26 2010. Filed under Technology.
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