Hands-on: getting work done with Google's new Aura interface for Chrome OS
Google attempted to introduce a new approach to computing when it first launched Chrome OS in 2010. The operating system consists of little more than a fullscreen Web browser perched atop a rigorously-hardened Linux environment.
Context & Ripple Effects
Chrome OS has been quietly walking back its founding thesis for two years. The 2009 pitch was that it might not be a PC operating system at all — a browser-first machine with no conventional shell — and by late 2010 the project was already being written off in pieces asking whatever happened to Chrome OS. A 2011 roadmap item added hardware acceleration and cross-platform support, signaling the engineering was being rebuilt for richer graphics rather than abandoned.
Aura is the visible payoff: days after TechCrunch reported that Chrome OS would soon look more like Windows than a browser, Ars Technica's hands-on confirms the fullscreen-browser premise is giving way to windows, a taskbar, and a conventional desktop arrangement on top of the same hardened Linux base. For a product launched in 2010 as little more than a maximized browser, that is a reversal of design philosophy, not a cosmetic tweak.
First-order effects
- Google's own Chromebooks trade the browser-as-desktop model for windowed multitasking overnight, changing what the hardware is sold as — less a web terminal, more a low-end notebook.
Second-order effects
- Converging on a Windows-style shell puts Chrome OS into direct feature-by-feature comparison with Microsoft's desktop instead of competing on the 'no desktop needed' argument, forcing Google to win on speed and price rather than paradigm.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the industry lesson from Chrome OS's first two years is that cloud-centric machines still need a familiar windowing layer to be usable day-to-day — thin-client purity loses to hybrid desktop-plus-web designs.
The trend: Cloud-first operating systems are converging back toward conventional desktop metaphors as vendors discover browser-only interfaces can't carry real workloads.