Several people (I’ll link to the great Om Malik for example) have made a very good point: since Chrome is basically just a browser with enough Linux code under it to drive a screen, keyboard and mouse, and since Android includes a Webkit-based browser (and support for larger displays as of 3.0), what’s the percentage in running ChromeOS when you could just as easily run Android and do all the Chrome-ish stuff through the browser, while retaining an app architecture underneath?
Part of it, I think, is like this: you want to be able to do your own thing at work. You don’t want the Man snooping through your S. Especially where your personal email is concerned. Well, if you have Chrome – the browser – you can have an entire separate machine in your browser window, with your mail and your chat and your Google Buzz and your Google +1 and your Google Reader and your Google Wave and your…you get the idea. And it’s the same, whether you’re in through your browser at work or your browser at home or your browser at the kiosk in the library that SOMEBODY ELSE NEEDS or your forthcoming ad-subsidized Google Notebook, only $99 at all Best Buy locations.*
Google has the reach and the power to do what Marc Andressen threatened Microsoft with fifteen years ago: the browser is the OS, and the means by which you get to the Web is abstracted away. Operating system? Hell, Chrome isn’t locked into a device – if they can make a netbook that’s basically just a browser terminal, they can do the same with a tablet or a TV (and are on their way with both). Ultimately, I think this is where Google and Facebook have a different sort of dominance – Google wants to be the middleware, the mediator for your Internet experience. Facebook just wants you to get on and stay on, and make sure to connect to as many people and things as you can because the data mining isn’t as effective if you don’t.
I say all this because I see another possible trend coming along, propelled by smartphones but also by things like Kindles and iPads with 3G built in. And that is achieving ultimate protection from work by doing all your personal stuff during the workday on your phone. All you have to do is keep a charge cable plugged in at the desk, and there’s all manner of stuff you can do without ever touching the boss’s network or computer. And as the person whose job it is to say “look, this is [EMPLOYER]’s computer and network, and in fact they CAN tell you not to do X, Y or Z on it” and make it stand up, it would be irresponsible not to at least consider how I would circumvent my own fascist regime.**
Once again, blogging is the obstacle. I could get by on a smartphone if I didn’t have to entertain you people. Ever tried knocking out 600 words on a piece of flat glass with your thumbs? That’s some bullshit right there. You could DO it on the iPad, but that as always don’t mean it’s to be done, which is why I will reluctantly start 2011 still logging into the personal side of my laptop to get S done during the day. Besides, as long as I have to haul this thing around for work, it may as well do for personal stuff too; if I couldn’t carry two separate cell phones I’m damn sure not going to carry two computers, even if one of them is a pound and a half and the size of a magazine.
* RAMPANT IRRESPONSIBLE SPECULATION MODE ON.
** Actual quote from a meeting at FirstJob, circa 2002: “He actually called us a bunch of black-shirted fascists. Now that’s a goddamn lie. I wore a navy blue shirt once last week.”