After conquering mobile OS market, Google is now looking to take over computer Operating System market. With its new laptop
range, it is not only promoting its new Chrome operating system, but is also planning to make cloud computing main stream. Though, at present, the success of this strategy seems a bit iffy, but with this attempt, Google is now facing Microsoft on the Redmond company's home turf.
In the beginning, Google is going to collaborate with Samsung and Acer for manufacturing the hardware. The laptops will come pre-installed with Chrome operating system and will be integrated with Google's cloud services. Since, all the information is going to be stored online, the units are likely to come without any hard drive.
As with any other Google's product or service, even this new offering is designed to make users' life better. Yea, if Google could have its way, it would have made us believe how its gathering of personal data without users' consent is actually for the users' benefit only!
Anyhow, Sergey Brin has claimed that regular PCs are maintenance intensive since you need to install softwares, antivirus, updates, so and so forth. According to him, Chromebook will change the way you use your computer as now your data resides on a cloud and hence you do not need to worry about the maintenance. He goes on to claim that data stored on a cloud is safer than the one stored on your local drive. Fine, we are just going to erase the various recent memories of Amazon outage and Sony security breach and believe what the Google Co-founder says.
Samsung will retail its notebook series with a base price of $429, whereas Acer series will start from $349 onwards. While Google would not get anything out of this retail price, it will get its cut from monthly subscription of $28 per month. This rate is applicable to corporate clients, whereas government and educational institutions will have to shell out $20 per month. So, essentially, your hard-drive less laptop will cost you about $1149, if you choose a base Samsung model with three year service plan.
Since, this laptop needs internet for its survival, Google has tied up with Verizon, which will provide free internet access for up to 100 MBs of data per month. Whoa, full 100 MB of data for one month, Google and Verizon are so generous. On the face of it, the deal does not look very attractive for retail customers, but Google is aiming at corporate clients. So, what is your view about this new innovation from Google Land?
