TAIPEI, Taiwan – Visiting Taiwan during Computex 2011, Google’s senior VP of Chrome, Sundar Pichai said the firm would not be porting its Chrome OS to tablets or handsets, nor would it be scaling Android up to Chromebooks.
Since Google’s Chrome browser was unveiled in September 2008, its users have exceeded 160 million around the globe.
Discussing the latest developments and strategies of Chrome and Chrome OS at the show, Pichai discussed Google’s plans for ever pervasive cloud computing, always-on connectivity and better performance thanks to hardware optimization for the firm’s software.
“We’re incredibly excited about the progress,” said Pichai to journalists at Google’s press conference in Taipei. “We are approaching 20% share in many countries and there are countries where we are well above 20%,” he added.
Indeed, the software giant claims to have more than doubled active users of chrome in the last year, indicating that more and more people feel comfortable having their data web based and in the cloud, readily accessible to any device.
“Chrome is very fast and we’re continuing to make it much faster,” said Pichai noting that Google would be looking into offloading performance to graphics chips (GPUs) in laptops and tablets to make the experience a faster one.
The Chrome OS tagline, “nothing but web,” is one many consumers can identify with, said Pichai, pointing out that the fact one’s data was readily accessible in many places on any internet connected device made for a “much, much better” end-to-end computing experience.
After all, what consumer, asked Pichai, wouldn’t want an instant on, always connected, all day battery experience which gets better over time and has security built in?
From boot up to being online takes just eight seconds, claimed the Google executive, claiming the OS brought “mobility experience to the world of notebooks.”
And with 3G options built in, with highly attractive “buy-data-as-you-go” packages from the likes of Verizon Wireless in the US, Pichai said consumers could finally feel the benefits of being always connected on a device built for a Web-productivity experience.
“It’s a computing experience that gets better over time,” said Pichai, explaining that Google had an edge over offline OSes such as Microsoft Windows because the updates for the software were pushed directly to users’ notebooks and happened seamlessly.
Google has also invested a lot of time and effort into the security of the system, said Pichai noting, that most computers today were “woefully insecure.” On Chrome OS, however, Pichai claimed the experience was particularly safe owing to a high level of encryption.
Security is certainly a salient point as Google seems to be positioning Chrome OS at the enterprise market.
The firm has been working closely with the likes of Citrix and VMWare on virtualization and has decided to sell Chrome OS in a “software and hardware as a service” model, together. This means companies can buy their employees Chromebooks for just $28 per user on a monthly subscription basis, including a central web console allowing IT managers to administrate all machines, and with Google providing support, warranty and even replacement once a notebook’s cycle has ended. Schools and governments who want to use Chromebooks get an even sweeter deal at just $20 per user per month, said Pichai.
“We wanted to make it drop dead simple for companies to launch chrome books,” he said noting that the program would launch in seven countries from this month, including the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
Meanwhile, the Google SVP said a variety of features would make the product even more enticing to enterprise users, with options like Google cloud print allowing people to print to any printer. Also, for those wary of a web only experience, Pichai said Google would make Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar available offline this summer. “There are also hundreds of apps that work offline,” he said.
Speaking of apps, Pichai reminded the audience how mobile phones had accustomed users to enjoying bite sized rich web applications wherever they were. Indeed, referring to one of the most popular mobile apps that has recently seen a Chrome OS debut – Angry Birds – Pichai said rich web applications like Rovio’s popular game were “really helping us build out the ecosystem.”
The furious fowl saw one million installs in just three days of being made available on Chrome and Pichai believes the experience of playing Angry Birds on a netbook “is really unique and game changing.”
Google’s main partners for its Chromebooks remain Acer and Samsung for the hardware and Intel for the underlying chipset. The Software giant says it sees no need to diversify its partners just yet, with no plans to move to an ARM chipset, or more mobile form factors.
“There are other OEMs that have asked to join the program but we want to be focused on quality,” said Pichai, though he did concede that the firm would scale “eventually.”
“I fully expect that next year we will have many more OEMs and partners to announce,” he said, though he wouldn’t be pressed further.
Pichai also shrugged off suggestions that Google would put Chrome OS on tablets or scale Android up to run on Netbooks noting the two were “very different compute models.” Google, he said, had no current plans to converge Chrome OS with Android and wanted “to offer the market a choice,” of two entirely different systems.
The Google executive also took a pot shot at rival Microsoft noting that most enterprise machines still used XP, launched way back in 2001 and which relies on cumbersome, time consuming upgrades. “Chrome updates itself completely all the time automatically and seamlessly, without disturbing the user,” he said adding “You can waste a whole weekend switching to a new PC, not so with Chromebooks.”
