Google and the Browser OS Push

September 3, 2008 —

Google-watching, now a fine art, went into hyperdrive with their new Chrome browser (one of many stories here). Some reports say Chrome already has one percent of the browser market, an impressive rollout.

Besides being a new browser, Chrome also helps the move toward a Browser OS. Back in the old days when DOS diehards bumped into World Wide Web early adopters, I recommended a company build a browser on top of DOS. This would have spread the browser reach while providing the diehards a way to keep DOS and avoid Windows. The company thought the idea was interesting, but had their own ideas for growth. I'm not saying my idea would have saved them, but the company is gone now, for what it's worth.

In the beginning days of the Web, browsers did so little you could easily build one on DOS. Those days are gone, because browsers do so much. Yet the advance of browser abilities, as well as the entire Software As A Service model where programs are written to run inside browsers, has made people dream of a Browser Operating System.

Some ideas have come and gone (YouOS.com) and some still fight for traction (goowy.com), but no company with the resources of Google has stepped up. That all changed on September 2nd when Google launched Chrome.

It may be too early to get excited yet, but imagine how much sense a thin client (one without Windows or any other full operating system) booting from a CD and running a browser like Chrome would make for many users? Applications, e-mail, and storage space are all available online, much of them from Google (Mail, Apps, YouTube, etc).

Bootable browser operating systems with a CD boot disk would never get a virus, because there's no hard disk where the virus can hide. That may make it worthwhile for many applications right there.