Chromebook: Internet Gateway or Savvy Marketing?

In his Chromebook announcement at Google I/O in May, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told the audience, “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.”

What Chromebook will do is present the Internet as another walled garden, just like Apple is doing with the iPad series. Content and tools are available in a wide variety on the iPad and other IOS, but only the tools and content Apple decides is appropriate. It is very likely that Chromebook will present the Internet in much the same walled way, and will become another platform provider that tortures its users.

If the Chromebook presents a truly open platform that lets users tap into the web services they want rather than just the web services Google wants to provide, then this really will be a big step in the evolution of cloud computing. But we should all remember that “Internet” doesn't automatically mean “open.” And lock-in is lock-in, no matter what the platform looks like.

cloud computing chromebook icloud apple cloud

Read More: