Google taking over with Chrome

Google going into this direction is quite interesting and not surprising. Yesterday was a big day in the tech sector with the release of Google Chrome. The development took over two years and this project has been done in secret. I wonder how many other projects Google is working on right now that the public is completely unaware of. For example, my imagination tells me they're going to create 'boot software' - as some would say an "OS." On Techcrunch, there is a big debate going on between an 'OS' and a 'Browser.' Some have taken the opinion that the browser is the 'OS.'

I see two sides to this argument: Those that are tech savvy understand what an OS means: the I/O, driver, filesystem, process, and other components. The other side envisions an 'OS' as a platform where to run applications, which is quite possible with Google Apps or other apps online.

In my view, advanced hardware is becoming obsolete in the personal computing space. Of course it's hard to predict how things will go, but my thinking is as follows:

Fast hardware on PCs (high speed CPUs, memory, video cards, mother boards, etc) will be necessary to run video games and resource intensive software such as video editing.

For the majority of PC users that use the PC to surf the web, there will be little need for all that power. If the hardcore processing is done on the server side (where this high speed hardware matters) - that leaves the client to be a simple device running a browser like Chrome. Which taken a step further, Chrome is designed to run Internet applications, which get better and better with time. And as Google is moving to the direction of running 'everything' in a browser - what's left is only a browser is needed - which is where the evolution starts to a new 'OS.' I think this will require more time, specifically in the engineering effort required to improve browser based apps. We would potentially see a shift of computing resources going away from the PC and more to the server.

This is interesting, as I've seen posts on Techcrunch to the effect of "Chrome will kill Windows." But my take on it is broader. If it's really possible to create GREAT APPS in a browser, will there really be a need for OS X?

This is truly an exciting time to watch what happens.