In the decade or so that the web has been in the public consciousness, it has revolutionised a host of everyday tasks – from finding out basic facts via Google to watching that BBC programme you might have missed, and there has been a conspicuous and at times violent revolution in the music business, the book trade and the media. Yet computers themselves haven’t been affected much.
Yesterday, Google set out to change that. In a radical new vision, the world’s most important technology company set out its contempt for computing as we know it. Why, Google asked, do computers so often ask meaningless questions of their users? Why does it take an age for a PC to boot up? Why, when the web is often our first port of call, do we need to click on an icon to get it going? Why, in short, is a computer a barrier when it should be a tool?
This is the same problem Apple is grappling with – Steve Jobs, its co-founder, has spoken at length of the “Post-PC” age, and the iPad’s instant access to apps and the web has been a great selling point. Neither Google nor Apple has said so explicitly, but the implication is clear: Microsoft’s Windows has not done the job. So long as computers are for geeks, they’re on the wrong track.
So Google has finally announced computers for people who don’t like computers. Where the traditional IT press will condemn such devices for lacking the bits and bytes and gigahertz of their contemporaries, Google has its sights set firmly on the mass market. Chrome OS, an operating system based on the web browser now used by 160 million people, aims to eradicate the need for “the IT department”.
This may all sound too good to be true – we’ve all become so used to new pieces of software coming out every so often. Each new PC sold is, in part, a vehicle to get users to upgrade to new software.
Yesterday, Google set out to change that. In a radical new vision, the world’s most important technology company set out its contempt for computing as we know it. Why, Google asked, do computers so often ask meaningless questions of their users? Why does it take an age for a PC to boot up? Why, when the web is often our first port of call, do we need to click on an icon to get it going? Why, in short, is a computer a barrier when it should be a tool?
This is the same problem Apple is grappling with – Steve Jobs, its co-founder, has spoken at length of the “Post-PC” age, and the iPad’s instant access to apps and the web has been a great selling point. Neither Google nor Apple has said so explicitly, but the implication is clear: Microsoft’s Windows has not done the job. So long as computers are for geeks, they’re on the wrong track.
So Google has finally announced computers for people who don’t like computers. Where the traditional IT press will condemn such devices for lacking the bits and bytes and gigahertz of their contemporaries, Google has its sights set firmly on the mass market. Chrome OS, an operating system based on the web browser now used by 160 million people, aims to eradicate the need for “the IT department”.
This may all sound too good to be true – we’ve all become so used to new pieces of software coming out every so often. Each new PC sold is, in part, a vehicle to get users to upgrade to new software.