Most tech savvy people would have heard about Google Chromebook by now. In case you haven't here's the link to Google's official announcement. Now this is what my opinion is. Google's Chromebook will not make any significant inroads into either Microsoft's or Apple's market share. Not even in the market share of unix-like operating systems. It was several years back when I had first heard about the idea of a cloud based operating system, where individual machines of people work only as terminals and every computing application is on the cloud. I had back then also dismissed the idea as commercially nonviable. So on what basis do I say that Google's Chrombook will fail? Let us analyze. Who is the end consumer of Laptop and tablet products? Essentially the consumer can be grouped into two categories. One, the home user and two, the office employee. Vast majority of laptops, tablets etc utilized for home use are used for surfing leisure sites, music, movies, sharing photos, playing games and some research etc. Now each of those activities has a personal element to it. An element where a user likes to "own" the activity, and own the data. Tell me, will you be secure in the feeling that all your personal activities on your home computer is carried out on an international freeway aka "the cloud". Technologically, one can find faults with this logic, but privacy and personal belongings is something every individual takes very seriously and not many people will be convinced that all their personal programs are not "installed" on their "own" computers, but are somewhere "else" where God knows who has "access" to how much information. An operating system that doesn't give the home user the comfort of control will never see mass acceptance within the consumer group. Now let us consider the second consumer group. Organizations provide Laptops to their employees for their business use. Security of data and control over the computer's programs are always very high on the agenda in any IT team of any organization. In most cases, organizations would be very reluctant, if not outright against, depending on a third party vendor to guarantee security. I have worked in consulting firms in the past and their concern for their client's data bordered on paranoia. I don't see any large organization trusting anyone, even if it's Google, with their business data. That only leaves us with schools, non profit organizations etc. Now here comes the problem of cost. Running Chromebook requires the purchase of a new computer. Most schools non profit organizations simply can't afford to overhaul their IT systems. And Microsoft provides their latest OS versions to major schools for free. Many academics prefer linux and unix like systems due to the learning opportunity they provide. So the question that is relevant to ask Google's Sergey Brin is, "Who is your end consumer?" Let us next approach this from another angle. Let us assume that Google's marketing would convince people to buy Chromebooks. But then we are looking at a separate set of very tough challenges. Most countries of the world do not have perfect mobile connectivity. In most developing nations, one would be unable to connect to a network in out of city areas. Does Chromebook give us a failsafe to be able to continue to work even when there is no network? Then there is the problem inherent in the nature of Cloud itself. No computer network in the world remains "Up" 100% of the time. Even Amazon's famed EC2 cloud faced outages in April. So assume that you are in a board meeting with the CEO of a prospective client and you really really want to impress him with the presentation you have worked on for the past month. You power up your Chromebook and try to open the presentation and it doesn't connect! or the presentation application is down! It is indeed a scary scenario. True, it isn't likely that everyone would face something like that but you get the potential pitfalls. Hence, I really do not see how Google's Chromebook will ever become a sizable player in the OS / Laptop market.
I dont really know if Chromebooks will fail — and dont want to argue that point… but your reasoning for why consumers wont want it, makes no sense to me. You think consumers are worried about their data being online?? Their personal photos? etc… Everyone already has all their personal data online. Their photos are in flickr and facebook, their calender is online, all their personal email is online, etc… And either way — If they have something they want to keep private — they will keep it on their PC or Mac. Its not like a chromebook is likely to be a persons only computer… Thats just my 2 cents
I actually agree with Kim here. I don’t think Google is willing to become the most used OS on Earth right now, but it has all chances to make a hit on the market. Most people who owns a netbook has a PC or a Mac at home and they need something extra easy to be carried and as quick as possible to get online and to some little work, surely check their facebook status or chat with friends. I believe Chromebook can be one of the next big things on the market, after the iPad, and it gives the user infinite possibilities counting on a very large choice of Google web applications (all working just very well) and many more.
A few issues I have noticed with Chrome recently involves Windows Live Hotmail and popular download manager. Google Chrome has very few applications in it and everything has to be loaded off the Internet.
