For Google, the Browser Does It All
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — When a Google engineer gave top executives computers running the company's new Chrome operating system, Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, tried to hold on to his computer running an older version.
Context & Ripple Effects
Two years after the first public test of Google's browser and a year after Eric Schmidt called Chrome his favorite Google product, the company is asking its own executives to live inside it full-time — Chrome OS is a machine where the browser does everything. The rollout has been rocky enough that a November 22 post asked whatever happened to Chrome OS, and Engadget's same-day pickup of this story reports the consumer launch has been pushed to 2011.
The telling detail is internal: Sergey Brin tried to hold on to his older machine when handed a Chrome OS computer. For a company betting that web apps can replace installed software, hesitation from a co-founder is the kind of data point skeptics will cite — and it lands just as Google's attention is pulled elsewhere by rumored takeover talks with Groupon and a Hollywood push that has yet to materialize.
First-order effects
- Google's own engineers become the only daily users of Chrome OS for now, since Engadget reports the consumer Chromebook launch slipped to 2011 — and adoption inside Mountain View is uneven, with Brin resisting the swap.
Second-order effects
- Hardware partners choosing between Google platforms get a muddled pitch at exactly the wrong moment: Gingerbread is confirmed as Android 2.3 rather than a tablet-grade 3.0, leaving Android for small screens and an unlaunched Chrome OS for laptops while Microsoft's camp questions whether Chrome OS happened at all.
Third-order effects
- If the browser-as-operating-system bet holds, control over the web experience consolidates around whoever owns the browser — positioning Google's Chrome where Microsoft's Windows sat in the PC era, a concentration of power regulators have historically scrutinized.
The trend: Computing's center of gravity is shifting from installed desktop software to the browser itself, with Chrome serving simultaneously as Google's application platform and its operating system.