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The Ultimate Webapp – Search – Will Help Chrome OS Succeed

Posted on 04. Mar, 2011 by Julian West in Features

I’m not one of those people that get my jollies by having the latest and greatest quadruple core processor PC which will allow me to spew tweets while I watch Avatar on a 3D HD. I’m also not one to upload my latest cat video to Facebook while on another tab download the entire Justin Bieber catalogue, and all while having 20 other tabs open with some information I forgot why I even looked it up in the first place.

So I’d love a world where you could run any program that’s part of my workflow from any computer I happen to be near by simply signing into it.  What I really want is a computing experience that is streamlined, practical and that I can take with me anywhere:  Google was gracious enough to give me the experience I’ve been looking for with the Cr-48. But I had to question it, like everyone else.

“Google is developing an operating system?”

Google has always been a bit of an enigma to me.  I know they created and now maintain arguably the best search engine the Internet has to offer and I use it daily.  But why get into the browser business?  Why Gmail?  When Google came out with Chrome, I was a Firefox user.  It was better than Internet Explorer that’s for sure: it was able to avoid all the traps the Internet had in place for Internet Explorer. But it seemed as time was passing on, Firefox was becoming so weighted down, trying to pile features upon features to keep people’s attention.

Chrome browser was faster, cleaner and incorporated the values of open source.  So I used it.

But Google developing an entire Operating System?  Pinch me.

“We don’t have a proper name for it, but trust us, it’s the future!”

While “cloud computing” is today’s buzzword, this computing concept has been around for a long time. Remember United States vs. Microsoft (1998)?  Microsoft defended itself by saying that “the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition”. It sounds to me like Microsoft was trying to develop an implementation of cloud computing, but failed, perhaps because of the government’s misunderstanding of technology.

Windows itself was too entrenched in a legacy model and too invested in legacy infrastructure — down to the very roots of Windows – to implement this idea successfully. As a result, it made Windows prone to the viruses and spyware that cost people so many headaches as well as money to defend against.

I haven’t kept a concrete history of these things, but looking back Google’s evolution, it all started with one simple thing:  search.  It’s pretty much their ultimate webapp.  If you think about it, that’s what makes the Internet indispensable for so many people. Information can be a great equalizer.  If you think about it, Google harnesses an awesome power that permeates though every aspect of our lives.  This power is simply access to information.

This is easy to take for granted but  ”search” is what makes the web useful in the first place.  Through it’s superior search engine, Google makes enormous amounts of data — real, practical data — accessible to billions of people.

Internet search has become so important that browser developers designed a specific box at the top for it so people didn’t have to keep on going to “www.google.com”.  You could say this was the beginning.  Google took it a step further and combined the URL box and the search box to make the Omnibox in the Chrome browser.

As a Linux user, I see the power of the command-line emulated in the url box. And from the looks of it, they want to develop that aspect of their interface further.  At the same time, the browser provides an intuitive enough interface for anyone to be able to navigate the system.

Now, it is apparent that Google is taking this development in the browser interface and applying it to their Chrome Operating System. Chrome OS is the biggest rethinking of the OS that we have seen in a very long time. Google wants people to rely on the Internet to get everything that is used on their computers.  And with HTML5, there is the possibility (at some point) for people to access their web based applications when there isn’t an Internet connection.

I get an aesthetic sense of joy from this reworking of the operating system.  It’s like witnessing a mathematician simplifying an equation where no more simplification was thought possible. It’s coming in a form that is familiar to everybody:  the browser and that simple window where you used to be able just to type a URL is beginning to assume the powers of a command line.

What makes me think Google will succeed where others failed?

(1) Google has started with the open source Linux kernel.  Microsoft likely failed to fully integrate Internet Explorer with Windows because Windows didn’t start out with networking and the Internet in mind.  They were was more of an afterthought.  The Linux kernel however, was built with networking in mind.  This networking aspect which is built into the Linux kernel, in part, is why Linux is inherently a more secure system than Windows.  The Linux Kernel is a rock solid foundation to build a true Cloud OS.

(2) They have been revealing the great potential of webapps.  Gmail is a great example of this.  Most everyone I know loves Gmail.  Some call it the best app, web or legacy, period.

(3) Google is building slowly, with open source help from the ground up.

Of course, we are in the real world and it takes some time for technologies to come to snuff, but it’s only a matter of time. The tech industry has invested a lot of resources and brainpower into developing legacy systems and we’ve come to depend on them very much indeed.  They have taken us far and old habits die hard.  There are plenty of companies that don’t want to see cloud computing succeed.

They are too firmly entrenched and invested in the legacy way of doing things. But they’ll adopt. Slowly.

Tags: Chrome browser development, Chrome OS failure, Chrome OS Google search, Chrome OS Linux kernel, Chrome OS success, Google cloud success, Google Search webapp, internet search as a webapp, Microsoft early cloud computing, Omnibox command interface, URL boxes