Google Depends on Official Partners For Chrome OS
Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features
One of the things I have been thinking about after looking at the video I shot from the recent Computex press conference held by Google is that despite the confusion held by many in regard to how Chrome OS and Android will fit in with each other is that it is going to depend on the partners for each particular project.
It’s likely we are not going to see the same type of fragmentation that has surfaced with Android. Although some of these devices being made are not smartphones and thus cannot get on the current application market legitimately, some of the gadgets we’ve seen are giving us different ways to think about using Android.
Instead of a gadget free-for-all with Android that has happened, Google is officially partnering with a small group of companies to launch Chrome OS for a release in the fourth quarter. It remains to be seen whether the list of companies will at some point be expanded, but if the market is ready for a cloud-based operating system at the end of 2010, then there may be a ton of companies interested in Chrome OS. The question is, what will be required to officially release Chrome on a device? While it has been said hardware specifications, could that include the form factor as well?
All we know right now is that a 10-12″ laptop/netbook is in the works for the initial launch. That may perhaps be because touch functionality has not been completely figured out in term of user interface interaction, but I’m just assuming this point.
Anyways, it’s a different model than Microsoft, whereby they support so many different devices I can only assume that this sometimes drives them mad. Google would be keen to set certain standards for products that are released with Chrome OS. At the same time, being a platform that is going to be on open source software there will be innovative ways for the market to grow that could n0t happen with a Microsoft operating system.
