Chrome OS touted as cloud-based revolution for computing

Monday, May 16, 2011

Google asserted that traditional operating systems suffer badly in a comparison with its new Chrome OS, a cloud computing-based framework that was officially launched at the company's I/O conference last week, Network World reported.

Co-founder Sergey Brin told reporters that effectively outsourcing many aspects of computer management to the cloud was the way forward, according to the tech publication.

"With Microsoft, and other operating system vendors, I think the complexity of managing your computer is really torturing users. It's torturing everyone in this room. It's a flawed model fundamentally. Chromebooks are a new model that doesn't put the burden of managing the computer on yourself," he said.

Acer and Samsung are the hardware manufacturers for the new Chromebooks, the first wave of which will ship June 15, Google announced. The search giant said that as many as 75 percent of business users could convert to Chrome OS without any major complications.

Nevertheless, some critics accuse Google of over-hyping its new innovation. A report from eWeek said this week that Google's automatic updating - which IT departments will have no control over - could be problematic.