chrome

Google's Chrome OS and Netbooks: Why Microsoft shouldn't worry...yet

While it may not have the same buzz as a new iPhone, Google's announcement of a new computer operating system based on its Chrome Web browser, has certainly set tongues wagging across the Interwebs. It certainly has many of the hallmarks of a hot news story--the bitter fight between Microsoft and Google; the rise of low-cost, low-power computing in Netbooks; free vs. paid software.

But while we're always in favor of more consumer choice and potentially lower prices, it's not quite time for Microsoft to worry about losing its firm hold on the Netbook market.

Microsoft's Windows XP is currently on 96 percent of Netbooks sold in the U.S. by some estimates (up from less than 10 percent in early 2008). When the similar idea of Netbooks running Google's Android operating system was discussed back in April, we said:

The very first Netbooks ran Linux operating systems, usually with a custom front-end to give users easy access to a Web browser and other frequently used apps. But as well-intentioned as that plan was, it wasn't until PC makers added the already archaic Windows XP operating system that the Netbook craze took off.

It wasn't that XP was the perfect solution for small screens and low-power CPUs--it's that consumers searching for a simple, low-cost second or travel laptop value ease of use over almost anything else. XP benefits from looking and feeling familiar to most users.

What we said then is just as true now, even if the OS is called Chrome and built specifically for PCs, rather than the smartphone-based Android.… Read more

To challenge Google, Microsoft might want to think Apple

The announcement of Google's Chrome OS plan puts an exclamation point on the challenge faced by Microsoft, but actually doesn't really change the core threat to Microsoft.

In short, Google is aiming to render desktop software irrelevant. To thwart them, Microsoft needs Windows to do things that a browser can't--or do the same things significantly better.

Interestingly, if Microsoft wants some tips on how to do this, it might want to look toward Apple. Essentially, this has been Apple's challenge all along: make the Mac experience enough better than a generic PC that it is worth … Read more

No thanks, Google--we've got Ubuntu

Google's revelation that it will create its own operating system will bring just one reaction from operating system enthusiasts worldwide.

"Not another Linux distribution," they'll cry.

They'll say this because if there is one problem that the Linux and open-source community has suffered repeatedly over the past two decades, it's been fragmentation.

It was bad enough that the Unix operating system fragmented repeatedly through the 1980s and 1990s. Systems administrators (like myself, earlier this decade) were forced to learn several different platforms: Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, FreeBSD...the list was always growing longer.

But the … Read more

An epitaph for the Web standard, XHTML 2

XHTML 2, we hardly knew you.

XHTML 2, a technology intended to build a more powerful Web from the ground up, met a quiet end last week, spotlighting the difficulties of standardization in a fast-moving Internet. Introduced in 2002, XHTML 2 was a centerpiece of standards work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

But incompatibility with the existing Web and a direction at odds with Web developers' desires doomed it to a slow demise. On Thursday, after a long reconciliation with browser makers who'd struck off in a different direction, the W3C announced that it will wind down … Read more

Google to Microsoft: It's on

There was already little doubt that Google was aiming at Microsoft's empire, but the announcement of a Chrome OS takes the competition to a new level.

For those who missed it, Google said late Tuesday that it plans to enter the operating system game in the second half of next year with a Linux-based OS that can run on both traditional PC chips and the ARM-based chips popular in cell phones. The idea behind Chrome OS is to create an extremely lightweight operating system that boots directly to the browser, in which all applications run.

In a blog, Google … Read more

Google plans Chrome-based Web operating system

That Google operating system rumor is coming true--and it's based on Google's browser, Chrome.

The company announced Google Chrome OS on its blog Tuesday night, saying lower-end PCs called Netbooks from unnamed manufacturers will include it in the second half of 2010. Linux will run under the covers of the open-source project, but the applications will run on the Web itself.

In other words, Google's cloud-computing ambitions just got a lot bigger.

"Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being designed to power computers … Read more

Chrome's new-tab page gets more interactive

Opening a new tab in a browser is a moment ripe with opportunity, and Google has begun testing a version of Chrome that can present new options when users do so.

Chrome's current new-tab interface, which also shows by default when the browser is first launched, displays a three-by-three array of thumbnails of the most commonly visited Web sites. It also sports a history search box, a list of recent bookmarks, and a list of recently closed tabs. That changes in Chrome 3.0.191.3, a developer preview version released Monday.

The new layout, though, features a thumbnail … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1010: Who loves the show? Metrologists

On today's show, we discover that Microsoft is a fine American company that thinks nothing of shafting its highest-paying users or subjecting the entire Internet to multiple episodes of projectile vomiting. And Apple shouldn't be forced by some pissy little upstart to change its perfectly legitimate EULA. And don't even get Cooley STARTED on sending self-replicating nanobots to Mars. Good times all around. Plus: Metrologists!

Listen now: Download today's podcast Subscribe now: iTunes (audio) | iTunes (video) | RSS (audio) | RSS (video) EPISODE 1010

Microsoft to offer Family Pack for Windows 7 Home Premium http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1145… Read more

Prevent your search default from being changed

The first thing I saw when I booted my PC yesterday evening was a notice that Google had prevented my default search setting from being changed. I certainly didn't want to switch from searching via Google by default. I hadn't even been considering a search change, regardless of Bing's pretty wallpaper.

To find out what program was trying to change my search default, I opened Vista's Event Viewer by pressing the Windows key, typing event viewer, and pressing Enter. I clicked Application in the left pane and scrolled to the approximate time the warning popped up. … Read more

Yahoo's Delicious proves Chrome extensions real

Yahoo has released a test version of a Delicious social bookmarking extension for Chrome, one of the strongest indications so far that the technology foundation is coming to fruition in Google's browser.

Extensions still must be specifically enabled through a command-line switch on the developer version of Chrome, and Google recently broke extensions compatibility through an update, so the technology clearly is immature. But Google is steadily addressing the concern that its browser lacks one of Firefox's notable features--called add-ons in the Mozilla browser.

"Delicious extension (alpha version) for Google Chrome is now available," said Amit Papnai of the Delicious team in a mailing list posting Tuesday. "This is a light version of the extension and allows you to sign in and post bookmarks to your Delicious account." … Read more