Google CEO: Chromebook Will Succeed in Multi-Screen World
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) spent considerable time discussing hardware during an earnings call yesterday. Read between the lines and it looks like Google is making a very strong commitment to Chromebooks — those cloud-centric notebooks currently offered by Acer, Samsung and Lenovo. CEO Larry Page described the “multi-screen world” in which “we are living in uncharted territory.” And, he vowed, Google will push the user experience forward.
“It’s been a long time in computing since we had this rate of change,” Page said during the call. “It probably hasn’t happened since the birth of personal computing. It’s why we have put so much focus on devices. They have been one of our biggest bets in the last few years, along with software to go with these devices, Chrome and Android.”
Then, Page turned his attention to the Chromebook strategy — albiet briefly. The low-cost notebooks run Google Apps and other cloud services. Customers can purchase the devices outright, or rent them on a monthly basis. Gone are the days of patch management, anti-virus software and day-to-day software annoyances. Chromebooks essentially are cloud appliances, where Google manages everything.
“Our goal here is to push the user experience forward, so you get the best of Google in one easy to use package,” said Page. “The Samsung Chromebook, which we launched in October at an amazing price of $249 was a holiday highlight. I love mine. It is super easy to use and almost maintains itself. Open a chrome tab on your phone and everything syncs on your laptop with no extra effort required. We also launched two new Nexus devices to rave reviews, Nexus 4 and Nexus 10.”
Read between the lines an Page seems to be describing a mobile world where devices run super-light software locally, while leaning heavily on managed cloud services. And yes, Google continues to play a larger and larger role in that modern hardware world.
And that hardware, he noted, will increasingly leverage Google Play. He asserted: “Google Play, another big bet, is on fire. The growth is tremendous. This quarter we signed deals with Time as well as Warner Music Group. So we now provide contents from all the top Hollywood film studios, music labels and magazine publishers. We have not even reached Google Play’s first anniversary.”
So what does The VAR Guy think of Google’s overall strategy, and the role of Chromebooks within that strategy? Stay tuned. Our resident blogger is testing Samsung’s Chromebook. More thoughts coming soon.
This photo of Larry Page looks like he has violet highlights, which distracts me from the article, it looks pretty cool on him actually. It is interesting that chromebooks will not need an AV as Google will take care of the security for you. Much like a thin-client, no?
Here in germany I realized only used chromebooks are available. So how do I get a brand new device? I don’t want any used stuff I perhaps cannot relay on.
Siegmar Spranger
Google seems to be more and more like Kodak: painting an universe that only they like to imagine. Kodak imagined that everybody will take digital photos, but will be willing to pay a large amount of money to have them printed at their “kiosks”.
What would the world do without photos printed on over-priced Kodak paper? Send them to friends in digital form, maybe?
Now Google imagines that everyone will voluntarily give away their data “for safe keeping on the cloud”, of course. What would the world do without Google keeping everyone’s data hostage?
As for their argument “We are getting your data anyway, so you’d better give it to us voluntarily”, it is a loser’s argument. They do get a lot of dross, true, but nobody in his/her right state of mind is giving their valuable data away so that Google can mine it and keep it hostage at the same time.
Unicorn@1: It has been too long. Hope life is treating you well. The VAR Guy is going grey, not violet, but doing well.
CCHOME Network@2: The VAR Guy, on your behalf, will seek an answer from Google.
Laxator2@3: Data control and privacy — huge issues. But we’re not exactly talking about financial services data, social security numbers, etc. (Or are we? If so, customer beware…)
-TVG
Chromebooks have come along way since they first hit the market. Lower prices, improved performance and additional offline capabilities have made Chromebooks a realistic (and even attractive) option for many.
That being said, not everyone can give up on Windows applications. However, even those users can take advantage of third party solutions like Ericom AccessNow, an HTML5 RDP client that enables Chromebook users to connect to any RDP host, including Terminal Server and VDI virtual desktops, and run Windows applications or desktops in a browser tab.
Even if you purchase a Chromebook for casual home use, you can also use it to connect to your work applications if necessary.
Click here for more information:
http://www.ericom.com/RDPChromebook.asp?URL_ID=708
Please note that I work for Ericom
Adam: The VAR Guy appreciates your insights. Do you represent Ericom?
-TVG
Unicorn, Chromebooks are a different type of thin client.
I have managed thin clients before and have found a few differences. (Some of this is just my opinion).
Thin clients (and “zero” clients) typically rely on a managed server and some type of reporting/management software for the thin clients themselves. Depending on the scale, the management of the server can be more cumbersome than the management of a number of thick clients. The positive is if the server is working well, everyone’s client is working well. The negative is if anything goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone. Even in a high availability private cloud, things can go wrong.
Thin clients are slow to display anything. Companies like Ericom provide some solutions for this, but it is far from perfect (for which Adam posts comments on many articles, thanks at least for representing yourself).
Most thin client setups I’ve worked with still require manual firmware updates.
Setting up a thin client is not completely trivial as usually they require at least keying in the network configuration, server name, server type, authentication if any, and other settings before they can do anything.
All of the maintenance tasks required for thin clients can sometimes make them more expensive than thick clients especially considering thin clients and servers are sometimes overpriced for what they do to begin with. Even relatively cheap solutions like Windows Thin PC have overhead associated with maintaining service.
In contrast, Chromebooks can be set up by the user provided they know their own login credentials. There are no manual updates. There is no server to keep running. If the management console is purchased with the Chromebook, the most this is used for is to select who can log in, what extensions are pre-loaded, and VPN/proxy information. If the network goes down (no or not enough aggregated WAN connections), the user can hypothetically restore connectivity themselves.
There are some advantages of conventional thin clients but those are mostly for legacy systems. In a cloud computing system, Chromebooks are much simpler to manage.
The main problem with Chromebooks right now for business use is the limited VPN options. A pure cloud computing scenario does not usually require any VPN to speak of, but organizations still reliant on client-server applications or still in a migration to cloud services may need flexible VPN options.
Unicorn, Chromebooks are a different type of thin client.
I have managed thin clients before and have found a few differences. (Some of this is just my opinion).
Thin clients (and “zero” clients) typically rely on a managed server and some type of reporting/management software for the thin clients themselves. Depending on the scale, the management of the server can be more cumbersome than the management of a number of thick clients. The positive is if the server is working well, everyone’s client is working well. The negative is if anything goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone. Even in a high availability private cloud, things can go wrong.
Thin clients are slow to display anything. Companies like Ericom provide some solutions for this, but it is far from perfect (for which Adam posts comments on many articles, thanks at least for representing yourself).
Most thin client setups I’ve worked with still require manual firmware updates.
Setting up a thin client is not completely trivial as usually they require at least keying in the network configuration, server name, server type, authentication if any, and other settings before they can do anything.
All of the maintenance tasks required for thin clients can sometimes make them more expensive than thick clients especially considering thin clients and servers are sometimes overpriced for what they do to begin with. Even relatively cheap solutions like Windows Thin PC have overhead associated with maintaining service.
In contrast, Chromebooks can be set up by the user provided they know their own login credentials. There are no manual updates. There is no server to keep running. If the management console is purchased with the Chromebook, the most this is used for is to select who can log in, what extensions are pre-loaded, and VPN/proxy information. If the network goes down (no or not enough aggregated WAN connections), the user can hypothetically restore connectivity themselves.
The main problem with Chromebooks right now for business use is the limited VPN options. A pure cloud computing scenario does not usually require any VPN to speak of, but organizations still reliant on client-server applications or still in a migration to cloud services may need flexible VPN options.
Sorry for double post, the comment box said something was wrong…
@TVG – Yes, I do. I mentioned it at the end of my comment.
It is our experience that chromebook VPN functionality is NOT functional in our (or any other we’ve found) corporate environment. We have been working directly with Google Enterprise Support for months now without a solution….
Most enterprises have an existing (or multiple existing) VPN solutions supporting multiple client types; there may be some option available but no one has actually identified it yet.
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