Google Confirms Chrome OS Netbook, Cloud, Enterprise Plans
December 8, 2010
Google is poised to take on the world, and I mean that in an ominously excited way. Google, in a webcast today, spent nearly 3 hours detailing plans for Chrome (the web browser), Chrome OS (the operating system), Chrome OS netbooks, a related app store… and enterprise partners. Imaging the following scenario for VARs and MSPs: Deploying Chrome OS across all computers in a customer enterprise. Or setting up hosted applications to be run and sold from the Chrome OS Web store. Those are big ambitions. But then again we’re talking about Google. Here’s the strategy.
The Chrome Browser Web Store is here. It doesn’t need much explanation: Download free and paid apps that use HTML5 — both online and offline — and make your browser your home sweet home. Google had key people from The New York Times and Amazon.com show off their latest incarnations of web-apps that make browsing and reading the news or shopping easier than ever. And yes, a new Chrome Kindle app is here too. All the apps are fancy, eye catching, smooth and sexy. (A lot like Apple iOS apps that act as front-ends for back-end web content.)
Google also invited Citrix on stage to show off their Citrix Receiver, which quite impressively showed off virtualized apps running on Citrix (or your own) private cloud. Excel, a CAD program and a few other apps ran inside the Chrome browser (via the Citrix Receiver app) as though they were installed to the hard drive.