Chromebook

After maybe a year of gestation, Google have announced the launch of the Google Chromebook. It’s an interesting product concept – essentially an operating system that is “no more” than a browser. In some ways, it could be regarded as a new iteration of thin client computing, where processing is essentially kept central, and certainly it fits well with the Google Apps model where everything is delivered through the browser.

From an IT Management perspective, it sounds like a brilliant idea. Reduce the cost of client devices, keep central control, reduce variation… but those traditional IT Management principals are being torn apart by the forces of consumerisation.
My gut feel about Chomebook, and ChromeOS, is that it’s an anachronism that is ahead of time… (Jeez. What’s Ballantine talking about here?)

Let me explain.

Chromebook feels anachronistic because we are in a world where consumerisation means that the device (rather than what runs on it – as more is run in the browser) is becoming more important. The marketing effort on Chromebook seems totally focused on the OS, and the devices themselves look a bit, erm, netbook. A category of device whose sales are rapidly declining.

On the other hand, Chromebook feels ahead of its time because, whilst network connectivity is now the norm, it’s still not ubiquitous. Other than the time killers, most of the explosion of Apps in the mobile market seems to be for effective ways of caching content when you are not on the network (readers, social networking clients etc, etc). A browser-only operating system is one that becomes truly powerful only when the network is truly everywhere.

A final thought on this for the moment – I wrote some time ago about the stuggles ahead at Google in issuing out ChromeOS devices to their own staff who (mostly) are the proud owners of MacBooks. I still think that that is going to be an “interesting” challenge…