Human beings often show some ridiculous ways of celebrating a complete non-issue, fuelled by hype and anticipation. And when the events are caused by some big guns, hells break loose beginning a mass hysteria. Looking into the world of tech industry, one can’t deny but accept the fact that Google is readily gobbling up everything on its way to web search supremacy. Every project they have touched, after their genesis on 1997, turned into colossal success for them generating billions of US dollars revenues. Obviously a honcho like Google turns heads with each single announcement, and when that comes with a huge bang like a brand new OS with speculative direct attack on Microsoft, people are bound to go crazy. So everyone is turning into an anticipator here? Ahem, not everyone went gaga and that includes me.

This much discussed recession brought a new trend of customers buying a whole lot of netbooks. These low costs machines, while enabling users to save quite a few bucks also required lightweight, resource friendly and power saving operating systems to bring out the full potential out of them. OS Tycoon Microsoft offered age old Windows XP and customers were obliged to bring it with their machines since they didn’t have much choices either. Feeling the financial prospect surrounding this new trend, several OEMs barged in making numerous models of netbooks for emerging markets. Popular Linux distros like Ubuntu appeared on the ground with their own netbook-optimized versions. Microprocessor giant Intel (which also produces popular ‘Atom’ processor for netbooks) started a project called ‘Moblin’ which is actually a highly customized Linux based distro for specialized hardware. Google was always in the verge of venturing into this market and with debut of ‘Android’, they were supposedly in! As expected, rumour mills didn’t stop making conjectures about a certain ‘Google OS’. Yesterday, with official announcement from Google made everything very clear, indeed they are foraying into OS market.

In their official statement last day, Google did light up the fact that their new OS will be available beyond the scope of netbooks. It will enable people to interact on web more easily than ever without the hassle of usual startup of a computer (indicating very fast bootup) and going through myriad options/tools available on a full-fledged operating system. It’ll also sport a very clean and easy to use interface (a la Google Chrome) that is specifically meant to reduce redundancy. So in a gist, they’re going to make something that pushes most of the user experience towards web instead of their standalone computers, an important step in advancement of cloud computing. Now, concept of running a whole OS off the cloud is nothing new, it’s a popular idea that appeared with advent of Web 2.0. And perhaps Google is the very first significant company that’s taking prominent initial steps on developing this concept. Although Apple MobileMe & Live Mesh from Microsoft have their own ways to deal with cloud based storage and general user experience, a full-blown OS with rich internet and media playing capabilities are not seen before. If Google is really going to deliver as what they saying, it’ll be a different kind of product.

Let’s ask a few questions ourselves to get moving.

Why would you want a cloud based OS?

For Google, the answer is simple. A cloud based operating system will help users, heavily dependent on web, to get their jobs done in faster and simpler ways. They won’t have to wait for the computer to boot a regular OS, open a browser, IM app or some Adobe AIR app to get their daily online venture going on. They’ll simply start a managed environment with selected apps and a direct connection to internet, fast n easy. Web based apps, residing on Google or other servers will then deliver necessary functions to consumers, reducing resource usage.

What should I need to get Google OS running?

According to Google, they are mainly targeting low-end portable computers like netbooks for their upcoming OS. Although they hope to reach a far broader audience than that, their OS will only need bare minimums to get started. I think even older Celeron and Pentium 4 processors will support this. So if you’ve got a 5 year old PC, don’t just throw it away.

Will it be able to supplement computing just using web resources?

Now that is an important question. Since user aspects varies from person to person, even barebone computing has its own classifications. Now, a bloke who just Facebooks and Twitters his day on internet, doesn’t need anything more than a browser and Google OS just fits in. Even professionals sending/receiving a lot of emails and browsing stuffs don’t need anything more than what Google plans to offer. Online office suits are also available from a few vendors including Google which will enable online creation and editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases etc. Browsers can also play local media files like audio and video to get entertainment section rolling. Even hardware wrenching games can be streamed off web servers and played on much lower config hardware. Delicate professional jobs like image/video editing, 3D modelling are also possible on the same way.

Cool! So what’s stopping us from jumping the bandwagon?

So everything seems fine, right? Now here’s a catch. You need a very good broadband connection to achieve all of these at one go. Even if we consider that there’s no need to update the OS, no worrying about security threats on workstations, no hassles of installing and updating several software – it must requires a stable and speedy internet connection. Without which desktop like experience off the cloud is just a dream. Although regular stuffs don’t need anything beyond 2 or 4 Mbps, smooth video streaming and other high end jobs require 8 or 16 Mbps. Having said that, most countries in world don’t offer that kind of internet connection cheap and that might be a problem.

Portability will also be a big concern. Since wireless internet connectivity is still on its infancy to spread, notebook and netbook users will find themselves in a hugely disappointing situation when their machines will be unable to do a thing having lost the wireless signal. And that doesn’t speak well for reliability of this new OS. It’s not a fault from Google’s side but of the current infrastructure that lacks power and stability to move everything online.

Data security holds an important point too. We will never want our private mails to be in malicious hands when sending. Security protocol implementation needs to be more precise and responsive and widely used. Also there are some people sceptical about Google’s part in their online venture and believe that soon Google will take over the world (just like Skynet in Terminator series) with all these personal information about them in its hand. Though it’s nonsense but people will be people, right?

On a final note, Google’s ideology of a web based OS is nothing new. It’s a good idea to move everything online and cut hardware/software costs but current infrastructure won’t allow to implement it on a really large scale that today’s regular operating systems enjoy. Those Windows killing propagandas are just overjoyed notions of foolishness. Completely online computing may be game changing, but not in recent future. And who knows if Microsoft is going to give them a challenge with their own offerings? After all, it’s still a Windows world.