Chrome OS

Reading through the excitement around the ChromeiumOS release I thought I'd try to explain what the big deal is and add my two cents. Many people want to put this under the tired lens of Microsoft vs. Google and end up missing the point.

Chromium OS is targeted netbooks, those machines that lie somewhere between a small traditional notebook and a high powered smartphone. With Andriod Google has positioned itself as a software OS provider on smartphones and wants to leverage that to Netbook devices. This makes sense to the boys in marketing. It also makes sense for two other important technical reasons that most of the industry press is missing: usability and security.

I've got a netbook user in my household. My roommate had work buy him a netbook so that he could reach back into the office from home. His tired laptop wasn't up to the task, and at $300 a pop, it was an easy decision for his employer to be able to keep him productive from anywhere. Add on a sprint 4g usb modem and he is tethered from home and on the road. I can tell you most of the time he is remoted into their terminal server, checking email, browsing the web, and catching up on facebook. This is probably much like what he is doing at work. From a usability standpoint, something like Chromium OS would work great in this case, provided a remote desktop web client is provided (which I think is a no brainer).

Now lets talk security. Google has a plan for baking in security early and a roadmap for the future. Even my favorite metrics guru Andrew Jaquith has been impressed and he has a great highlight of the security features. I am impressed with the trusted boot/OS integrity check process, which I think will probably involve some of the trusted computing/TPM technologies I've worked on at work. The main takeaway from all of this is that this device will be easier to defend from web based attacks. Disallowing the user to install software and sand-boxing all web apps will limit the exposure to any malicious web contents that manage to trick the users into clicking on them.

Right now my roommate is running a full blown Windows XP (gasp!) which takes us right back to Facebook. Users are going to do things that they do, include going to websites, purposefully or through trickery, that will put data at risk. Google is presenting businesses an alternative in the Netbook area where trusted access and limited exposure can help protect corporate data while still allowing users to browse the Internet and have access to their web applications. Mix this with the low price point (free, anyone?) and I think you have a winning combination.

Does this replace or threaten Microsoft? I say, no. There is a place on Netbooks for a real, traditional OS. Games jump out as obvious, but so does office applications, photo editing, and others that aren't useful as web apps (yet). What this may do is spur faster adoption of trusted computing technology by Microsoft in Windows 7 and future platforms. I'd love to see hypervisor dynamically protecting the OS and verifying integrity of IE sand-boxing. This could be the catalyst to bring this technology to the mainstream desktop.

We have witnessed falling notebooks prices for a long while. Google may be giving us the best Christmas gift of all -- a sub $200 productive Netbook -- next Christmas.