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Google’s Cr-48 Chrome laptop is a really stupid idea, based on Pollyannaish concepts of how wireless networks and carriers function. It’s a device made for perfect networks with unlimited data and uninterrupted connectivity, which don’t exist in America today. Cementing Chrome’s uselessness, Google has a much better mobile OS play: Android.
I somewhat understand the appeal of Google Chrome OS on an inexpensive desktop PC, a nettop. Tethered to a 100 percent reliable, fast connection with unlimited data, it’s possible to do a lot of basic things in “the cloud.” Like many other unsuccessful, Linux-based consumer PCs, a Chrome-based computer will be immune to many viruses and much malware. But those Linux-based nettops have failed before, and I don’t see what Chrome brings to the table that an older Linux PC with Firefox didn’t.
If Google wants an OS for portable devices, it doesn’t have to look farther than its existing Android is superior to Chrome:
1. Wireless networks aren’t reliable
It’s not just about dead zones. There are plenty of places where 3G and Wi-Fi are slow or unusable-inside buildings where you have don’t have the Wi-Fi password, on airplanes where the Wi-Fi is clogged and slow, deep inside shopping malls or hotels where the walls repel 3G.
Android phone developers know this. That’s why many Android apps have offline modes. Whether you’re reading the New York Times, watching a video stored on an SD card, or playing Angry Birds, your Android phone doesn’t freeze up or become a doorstop when the networks go dark.
Chrome devices have some local storage, but Google seems to treat this as an embarrassing, shameful secret, only to be revealed in dire circumstances.
2. “Living in the cloud” will bust your data cap
Chrome OS users get 100MB per month from Verizon Wireless for free. But “living in the cloud” without the sort of server side optimization used by Opera and BlackBerry is a horrendous data hog. With a laptop and a tethered Smartphone, I typically use 100-250MB per work day-and that’s with a local word processor and other local apps!
This is all fine in a world without data caps. But we don’t live in that world. In fact, it looks like 3G and 4G data plans will become even more extensively metered in the future. Chromebook owners who want to travel away from their desks will have to either hunt high and low for Wi-Fi hotspots, or sign up for Verizon data plans and find themselves using more data than if they were accessing the Web using more parsimonious Smartphone apps.
Android Smartphone owners also have the option to download alternative browsers like Opera and Skyfire, which sip rather than guzzle data, reducing data usage even further. Chromebooks won’t have that ability.
3. Web technologies suck for many app categories, especially games
The Chromebook can play a wide selection of simple, casual, weak-sauce Flash games. It’s like the first year of the iPhone all over again, when Steve Jobs insisted that HTML5 could provide great gaming experiences. Apple got wise to this pretty quickly; you need a better SDK than the Web provides to offer the games that users really want.
Palm went through the same growth process with WebOS spawning the PDK game development kit, and Android offers its NDK for game developers. Tethered to the Web, the Chromebook will lag behind the simplest low-end Smartphone when it comes to options for game developers and players.
4. Honeycomb will solve Android’s screen size and input issues
Android-powered, laptop form-factor devices have failed in the past in part because Android’s apps and UI just aren’t designed for full keyboards and big screens. Compared to Windows and Mac OS notebooks, Android “smart books” looked like toys.
We can still argue the toy things, but the new, tablets-centric version of Android called Honeycomb will usher in an era of big screens and full-sized interfaces for the mobile OS. Honeycomb could easily be transplanted to laptop form factor devices. While I still think consumers would choose Windows and Mac OS over Honeycomb on a laptop, Honeycomb will have a much bigger ecosystem than Chrome, because Chrome only has the Web. Honeycomb has the Web and more.
5. Chrome is an app, not an OS
Android could run Chrome. If Google truly believed its Chrome platform was a portal to glory, the company could slap an ARM-coded version of Chrome onto a device running Android and call it a day. Chrome, on the other hand, cannot run anything else.
I’m pretty convinced that the Chrome and Android projects will merge sooner rather than later, with Chrome becoming a layer or app on Android. Do you agree? I’d love to read your thoughts below.