As you’re aware, the latest buzz this week has been about Google announcing a ‘web OS’. In short, the Google Chrome OS is the User Interface for a stripped down, speedy Linux Kernel. What I found interesting however, was the lack of publicity that Microsoft’s ‘announcement’ the day before gained. The day before Google announced their ‘web OS’, Microsoft announced that it had a product in its research labs, codenamed ‘Gazelle’. From the information that was offered, it seems that Microsoft’s focus is on making the browser the ‘kernel’ of the ‘web OS’, and the bits and pieces of data it pulls from the web become abstracted ‘APIs’. This results in better stability and presumably performance. This is somewhat similar to how Google Chrome isolates each tab in its own process, except that now it is brought down to the HTML code level.
The other thing I found interesting was that Google Chrome does not even run on Linux yet (at least, no public builds). There is an alpha version for Mac, and a full version on Windows, but no public Linux builds. They have a long way to go on this project.
Another interesting facet that the concept of the web browser as the user interface brings to the game, is that of localized storage. If the only accessible UI is that of the web browser, then what happens when the user does not have access to the internet? Fortunately, HTML 5 brings localized database storage to the web browser. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 6 & 7 do not support this. Internet Explorer 8 supports it somewhat, and most other web browsers (Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) support it to varying greater extents. This is a boon for web developers. It will help shift the web experience to more standards compliant browsers.
The other option for localized storage is Google Gears, which Google will no doubt push developers to use. I think however, that the majority of developers will choose to go the open standards route, rather than Google’s technology.
That’s my perspective on the ‘web OS’ news this week. Feel free to leave yours in the comments.
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