

Google ChromeOS is Google's Sneak Attack and Here is Why. - VSack

If you are anything like me, you've taken a look at the ChromeOS and thought "lolwut" when it comes to the niche its trying to fill.  Techies want more out of it, your parents can't use iTunes with it, and Grandma heard old people like the iPad better.  ChromeOS seems to be a solution to a problem nobody has.<p>Today I booted a VM of ChromeOS and it immediately hit me:  Everything the Google Chrome and Chrome OS team have been doing lately points to one thing: a universal architecture.<p>If you partnered with or packaged a virtual machine seamlessly around Google ChromeOS, you could deliver an Internet experience to the user that protects them from almost any sort of attack.  Chrome inherently is already sandboxed, but if you add the stripped down kernel of ChromeOS that is self-healing, you built an almost bulletproof attack surface.<p>There are still some issues with this idea.  But the fact of the matter is that computers have the speed necessary to isolate entire operating systems in a virtual environment with little to no impact on performance for the user.<p>Was this Google's strategy all along?  What do you all think?
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nextparadigms
Google ultimately wants everyone to move to the web. Chrome OS is just one
more method to advance the idea that web apps are powerful enough for most use
cases.

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dstein
You're missing the meta-strategy that Google ideally wants all computing I/O
to run through its filters. If you use Gmail, Chrome browser and OS, Google
Docs, Android, and now G+, then Google has a vice grip on your balls.

Google isn't the first software company to try to create a thin-client
computing system on top of personal computers. And I have a feeling (or hope)
they won't be successful for the simple reason that they are extending their
reach too far.

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Pewpewarrows
It'd definitely be an amazing product for Kiosks that need locked-down
architecture.

