Google Plans a PC Operating System

[Marc Lanctot]

On Wed, 8 Jul 2009 15:16:30 -0400 (EDT)
"Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday-L09J2beyid0N/H6P543EQg at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Jul 2009, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:

[snip]

> > To about 90% of the population, it is a new OS so why dismiss it?
> > With Google's market reach and PR, this is a very positive
> > development.
> 
>   i disagree, since that article makes no admission whatsoever that
> their "new" OS is simply a repackaged linux.  while, *technically*,
> they have the right to do that, *ethically*, i think it sucks.
> they're announcing this exciting new development without giving credit
> to all of the linux developers who made it possible.  i find that
> incredibly sleazy.  but that's just me.

Robert, 

I agree with the sleaziness of the /article/ for the reason you state,
but it's the New York Times journalists who are at fault, not Google.
The first link of the article refers to Google's actual announcement
[1], which mentions that: 

"The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a
new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."

I'm sure their OS also contains all the GNU utilities and they should
probably give credit to those guys too. 

I agree with Jamon, though. I'd be very worried about privacy.. in
particular, I'd worry that the whole OS is a mechanism to collect more
private data from unaware users. I've managed to avoid gmail all this
time for these reasons. I wouldn't touch Chrome OS with a ten-foot
pole. Let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if the OS uploaded process
usage data to Big Brother. 

Marc

[1]
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

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