Lou Franco's ECM Imaging Blog

Ok, so Google is coming out with an OS for netbooks. It’s a classic vertical niche market entry strategy. With support for ARM, they keep out Microsoft (at least, for now), and Apple won’t provide OS’s for non-Apple hardware, so the field is wide-open.

Google says that their OS will be created from the ground-up with the web in mind. Their killer features are fast boot-up and immunity from viruses and malware (well, not really).

I’d like to see much more than that. Here are some ideas for what I think an OS that is made to run web applications would be able to do:

1. Single-sign on to all of my web apps. Right now, when I log into my work PC, I can go to SharePoint or get to any intranet resources based on my Windows Authentication. With a Chrome OS netbook, I expect that my login to the machine is good enough to get me to GMail. Since Google supports OpenID, any other web app could accept that credential as well. Obviously this needs to be done securely, and allow me to invalidate the credential remotely in the case where the netbook is lost or stolen.
   
2. Make Google Docs into a filesystem. No matter what they say, I still want to write documents with native apps. I’m using Windows Live Writer to write this blog entry because its interface is much better than anything on the web, and I don’t have internet access everywhere I have my netbook. Even with HTML5 local storage, I just don’t believe I won’t prefer a native app. What would be nice is if my app had some local place that was synched to Google docs, or when I’m online, it just saves back there seamlessly.
   
3. Create an HTML standard for devices. It’s 2009 and I still can’t print from a web app. This could be added now, but in the context of an OS, it makes sense to give web apps access to locally installed devices.  I want a safe way to interact with any device and simple API’s for common devices (printers, scanners, and digital cameras).
   
4. Create a Desktop push web standard. Google makes a gmail notifier already. Just open this up so that it’s easy for anyone to register a service with the OS that allows them to notify the user.
   
5. Finally bring App to App and App to Desktop integration to the web. So far, Google has only really had to compete with other web applications, but if they are my OS, then they need to catch up to 1984 technology and give me cut and paste, drag-and-drop, and deeper integration between applications. On my Mac, all of my apps have a media browser into iLife, Mail is integrated into Contacts, any app can expose data to Spotlight. With Gmail, I can’t browse into Flickr for an attachment, or drag a document from my desktop. Again, they should be doing this already, but if they are competing with desktop OS’s, then it’s time to finally catch up.

A lot of this is just thinking of Web APIs in the same way that Microsoft and Apple think of their APIs – so far, Google isn’t really providing me basic application services (like controls, a windowing system, a messaging system, I/O, etc.), but if they are an OS, then this is exactly what I need from them.

Edit: More Chrome OS reaction around the web.