Google Chrome OS – Is this the beginning of the end for Microsoft?

22nd
JUL

Google Chrome OS – Is this the beginning of the end for Microsoft?

Posted by Michael under Search

Google have come along way from their humble beginnings as just one of many search engines in use on the net, to the household synonym for Search Engines. Their next big step on the ladder to internet domination has taken the form of their own browser, Google Chrome. As if the rave reviews for this alternative to the hugely popular Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers isn’t enough, Google are pushing the boat out in an even more spectacular fashion.

Next on the agenda is Google Chrome OS – a revolutionary operating system to rival Microsoft’s Windows packages. Focusing on speed and user-friendliness, the system seeks to change the way our computers work via ‘cloud computing’. Put simply, this means that all the information we usually store on our hard drives – photos, music and documents – is kept in a virtual cloud online. Allowing your entire computer’s contents to then be accessible all over the world, Google Chrome OS means that users will never again be tied to one piece of hardware. If your hard drive and the whole operating system you know as your Desktop is stored online, Google Chrome OS offers you the chance to ‘log in’ to your entire operating system from any computer, anywhere and at any time. You never need to bring a bulky laptop on the commute again.

Other benefits of Chrome are centred around price. While Microsoft has monopolised the home computer market for decades, the growing size of their Windows packages, especially recently standardised edition Vista, has seen the size of home computer hardware and laptop memory having to grow in capacity, and of course price, to house this bulky software. That’s not to mention the fact that with hard-drive based software systems, faults and bugs are something we’re all too familiar with. However, with Chrome’s proposed internet-based memory storage operating system, cheaper computers and a freeware operating system mean that Google could hold the home market firmly in their hands.

As we increasingly make moves towards an entirely online existance, with photostorage sites, online email accounts and online music players already mainstays, Google may just have latched onto the new zeitgeist of the computing and internet savvy world in which we operate.

It almost sounds too good to be true, so what are the inevitable drawbacks? We’ve all seen the targetted advertisements appearing on plenty of pages across the web, eerily accurate at times and all generated by GoogleAds. If Google are so willing and so talented at getting information from us in order to generate ads now, what’s to stop them accessing your own private hard drive if you’re a Google Chrome OS user? Of course, they only ever do it to make money, so is it no harm no foul in this case?

I started off by talking about Google’s rise and rise, and while it’s exciting to watch, it could be a downside. With Google holding a monopoly around 70% of the Search market, and gmail growing every day, soon it seems that the once-independent bastion of the internet could find itself under the ownership of one overarching, all-powerful company.

That might seem reactionary, but is there any reason to celebrate robbing Microsoft of their crown only for Google to become the new super-power?

Related: The Times

Bookmark It