Yet another blog pundit’s opinion of Google’s new operating system
I have just read Kongoni developer A.J. Venter’s blog post about Google’s new operating system. I didn’t agree with some of his views and started typing a response as it’s the tradition whenever someone is wrong on the Internet. However, it quickly got too long for a comment and, since I’m not posting for quite a while on my own weblog, I thought what better opportuntity to post. So, here’s my response and view of Google’s operating system projects:
I personally am more paranoid of the Google OS. I haven’t really navigated the blogosphere on this, so my view may have already been stated extensively.
I see a big threat in what Google is aiming here, which is complete dependence on the cloud. Google plans to release most of the so called Chrome OS as free software. Yes, but we should also look at what this OS is reduced to. Or more importantly, in which way Google is hoping to ‘educate’ its users. Replacing or modifying an operating system by Google shouldn’t be an impossible task (though with a varying difficulty from simply reinstalling a laptop’s OS to bypassing restriction mechanisms on an Android phone), but a user’s set habits are much harder to replace.
I don’t know if you would see this as unsubstantiated speculation, but Google’s main goal seems to be to create a computing environment where the operating system and everything on the user’s machine just serve as the boot loader of the real computer, i.e. the cloud, of which Google is trying get the majority userbase as quickly and as early as possible.
“this isn’t trading one monopolist for another”
My fear is even deeper than that. Microsoft is clearly a monopoly with many of its decisions taken not in the interest of its users, but rather against them. However, Google, if you accept my previous premise, is posing a much bigger threat. Whereas the fight between Free Software and Microsoft is a relatively conventional struggle between the right thing to do with your personal computing versus the wrong thing, Google’s end goal has the risk of making this whole fight irrelevant, and not in a good way…
Should we get our tinfoil hats?
Despite the significance of the threat, how or if Google’s cloud computing ideal is inevitable is far from being definite. Google doesn’t quite have the same direct force on computer users’ machines the same way IBM once had or Microsoft is still enjoying. Therefore, Google is trying to lure users with features and conveniences. Although cloud computing has several advantages over traditional computing especially for users of highly restrictive platforms such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Mac OS X, I personally believe it can never match the power of personal computing, especially when done with Free Software.
On the flip side, Google is also doing numerous beneficial things for digital freedom such as developing some pieces of software under free licenses or fighting for internet standards. Whatever motivation they may have for doing these, they certainly have also immediate good effects for the free software communities. So, I am not suggesting that one should reject all of Google’s projects. On the contrary, we should try to benefit from them as much as we can without sacrificing already established freedoms. It is only necessary to keep their end game in mind while doing so.
7 Comments
People were living happily in the cloud not listening to the warnings… and then the storm came!
Hi!
I like your post although I think you overstated several things. I think the basic idea of the operating system is to use web standards further. I do not believe that Google is planning to develop an OS that is going to be unusable off-line. So as a normal operating system will have all the basic parts install like bootloader and a basic kernel with some GUI interface that is going to start a browser (Chrome probably). An enriched Web API is going to help the web applications interact better with the operating system (like Google gear). The browser should be able to store applications and related documents for off-line use. It must be a lot like the Mozilla engine (The engine that Firefox, Thunderbird and I thing Songbird use) but this time applications GUI is going to develop with HTML instead of XUL. A powerful JavaScript engine will handle all the application logic. You see Google is been working hard for this goal for a couple of years. I believe there are dangers that must be avoided in order for the computer users to preserve their freedom but many facts are overstayed.
Thank you!
I don’t think we can fight this match for software freedoms with desktop software. We can only fight Google cloud with a free as in freedom, distributed, cloud hosting service.
There are already freedom ISPs, i.e. people who share their bandwidth with the public (see Orange Mesh Network), why can’t we build a cloud hosting based on the same principles?
We already have most of the needed parts: distributed filesystems, databases, we only need a distributed program execution engine – and maybe we have that one too.
Think of it: a cloud hosting that is hosted around the world by freedom lovers could hardly go down, would use less bandwidth and is resistant to censorship.
And it could use Phantom Protocol to provide anonymity to all parties. (http://code.google.com/p/phantom/)
Love your website!
Don’t worry about Google Chrome OS. It’s just Linux kernel.
It will take years before it can replace Windows 7, so it all depends on how Microsoft responds to Google.
I have the same fears about this… but I couldn’t express myself so clearly… This phrase about changing the user’s habits is central, and I’ve been so worried about this new scenario we may be forced to face: it´s no longer free vs proprietary software… it’s free for user’s freedom vs free for… making money?
The OS seems like an interesting idea though, but I’m relegating it to the status of valix and lolcode, interesting to look at, no chance I’ll use it for practical things
@Bogdan
A more interesting idea there would be using it based on P2P standards, when you connect to the service you can upload whatever you want and it gets distributed to everyone on the network, everyone with pieces(or whole files) depending on how much space you allot it(set in the client, 0 is not an option.) Never crashes, fast speeds, impervious to censorship, promotes sharing, and it serves as an excellent method of distributing your stuff.
Can anyone think of downsides to this plan?
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