daverea.com

Yes, this is last minute, but I just found out about an upcoming webcast – in theory – announcing the forthcoming Google Chrome OS. Watch here for updates…

13:02 EST — Apparently some presenters are stuck in traffic, webcast will begin soon…

13:05 EST — Webcast beginning – Google VP of prod development speaking. No launch today, about a year away from announcing a release… Lots of progress thus far…

13:06 EST — As of today, the code will be fully Open Source. Google developers will work on the same source tree as the rest of the world. Google Chrome is the foundation of everything being done.

13:07 EST — Chrome browser is now the main browser for 40 million users. Chrome’s Javascript performance is about 40% faster than IE. This makes rich web applications much faster, noticeably for user. There have been about 20 updates through the last year.

13:10 EST — Tons of new stuff coming this year in Chrome. Chrome for Mac ready for production use before end of 2009. Same for Chrome for Linux. Extensions system will be significantly enhanced as well. Extensions will be automatically kept up-to-date for users. Google is working hard to give web applications more opportunities to access system-level resources, from within the browser – web applications should have access to the GPU, multi-core CPUs (and threading), and real-time communication. More offline usability, with local storage. The whole idea is to give web apps the full functionality and richness of desktop applications. In 2010 all these APIs should be fully integrated into Chrome, Google is also working with other browser vendors.

13:12 EST — There have been powerful trends happening in the industry along with Chrome’s evolution. Netbooks have been growing hugely, despite economic hardships worldwide. There is also more pervasive usage of cloud computing researchers. There is also a lot of innovation on the device front – phones are getting smarter, tablets are showing up on the market, there is convergence between traditional form factors and small portable form factors. Phones are becoming more like regular computers (horsepower wise) and netbooks are becoming more like phones. All these trends are changing our model of personal computing. This is what Chrome OS is.

13:17 EST — With Chrome OS, Google is focused on speed, simplicity and security. Needs to be blazingly fast, like an appliance – ready to use from turn-on. End-to-end experience, including boot time, will be very fast. In Chrome OS, every application is a web application – no installation, no updates, just a URL. This reduces the lack-of-familiarity encountered by new users. All data will be in the cloud (DR: hmmm, not sure how I feel about this). This will include all personalization, applications, data.

13:18 EST — With everything being a web application, can do different things with security than is done now. Since no binaries are installed on the system, malicious code can be detected much more easily, and problems can be fixed with a reboot.

13:19 EST — Doing a cold boot right now – 7 seconds to login! Holy cow! Google is still working to reduce this time further. Logging in takes about 3 seconds. It looks like Chrome, the desktop looks like a browser. Now going to do a walkthrough of the UI. This is not fully baked yet, will change over the next year, but everything is now open and many of the concepts shown today will carry over to the final product.

13:21 EST — Running apps are separated into tabs across the top of the screen, just like tabbed browsing. Apps are shown in a tab. Panels can pop up from the bottom of the screen; they’re “persistent lightweight windows” that can be rolled up and down. They hold things like chat windows, contacts, buddy lists, music players etc.

13:25 EST — Showing examples, such as flash-based full-screen chess game, e-book reading (such as from Google Books).

More…

Long before Google and the Open Handset Alliance announced the Android platform to the world, there were plenty of folks speculating that Google might be concocting their own smartphone – the mythical “gPhone” – sparked by Google’s acquisition of the fledgling Android OS and its parent company waaaaay back in 2005. The mass realization that Google actually had no plans to build their own handset led to a lot of temporary disappointment, but if Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s recent proclamation that “Android adoption is about to explode” is any indication, that disappointment has worn off.

But then, yesterday, we learned of something big happening in a different corner of the smartphone world: Nokia has sued Apple over 10 patents that it claims are infringed by the Apple iPhone. What’s this got to do with Google and Android? Other than that it got me thinking, pretty much nothing…

Illustration by Bob MacNeil

Nokia – which happens to be the world’s largest designer and manufacturer of mobile telephony products – is not a patent troll. But there are a lot of patent trolls out there, lurking under the moss-covered bridges of the intellectual property world. They’re companies whose only purpose is to collect patents and try to assert those patents against companies that actually create things. Perhaps Apple’s current situation – which will probably end in a settlement, if BGR’s prediction comes true – is a touch illustrative of why Google never actually designed a phone of their own…

By staying focused on the software stack and the user experience that Android provides, Google has leveraged their expertise and ability to execute to achieve the best of both worlds: They promote their services (and, in turn, monetize their efforts) through tight integration with the Android stack, and let the phone manufacturers – who already have the licenses and IP agreements in place in order to manufacture phones – take care of producing the hardware. By open-sourcing the Android operating system, and basing that system in large part on a foundation of open code, they garner even more protection from patent trolls; it’s awfully tough to find patents to assert over ideas that are in the public domain!

The lesson to take away from all this? Perhaps it’s that Android is proof-positive that a company can choose a path that’s good for their customers, good for the computing community at large, and simultaneously good for the company. This certainly isn’t the first time Google has struck that balance – and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

[image source]