Google is clearly making a play for the enterprise using small to medium businesses as a beachhead.<p>It has been noted here that the world's most widely used database is Microsoft Excel. This is because enterprise software is about top-down control of workflow and processes -- it's solidified corporate policy/politics! As a result, enterprise software sucks. In order to work around maladapted restrictions imposed by enterprise software, the most productive workers take their processes and automation into spreadsheets like Excel, where they can adapt quickly to changing conditions. Often, the most successful of these processes are then built into enterprise applications, to become the new status quo.<p>Google wants small and transitional medium sized businesses to outsource much of their IT to them and to run their spreadsheets on Google's apps. Google hopes that this will allow them to do with ad-hoc processes in spreadsheets what they did with web links: organize and unify a huge collection of disparate linkages to create value. When a company has all of its spreadsheets in Google apps, users will be able to link data in disparate spreadsheets. This network of links will be subject to analysis. New business processes will be absorbed from the ad-hoc spreadsheets into the enterprise more quickly and efficiently. This will have tremendous value to companies, especially small and medium sized ones, some of which will grow into giant conglomerates. If this works, Google stands to dwarf the achievements of Microsoft.<p>EDIT: This remote desktop stuff is just a selling point in support of larger goals.
If I install Ubuntu today (and probably other Linux distros) I get the option to do a RDP connection to apps or a desktop on a Windows server.<p>How is this different?
Isn't Google just giving all these win32 apps a new lease on life? Forget HTML5. Just buy some Windows servers and move your win32 app to the cloud instead. It's the most practical thing to do if Google wants their OS running on lots of desktops but is it good for the future of the web? All I see here is more ad views for Google and more Windows licenses for Microsoft. We get stuck running win32 apps for the next decade because it's easier & cheaper than developing a native HTML5 app.
That's a fairly standard linux feature (X+SSH), isn't it? Seems like Chrome OS going to be the long awaited commercialization of Linux for the desktop.
To be honest, I am actually looking forward to install this OS into my system. I saw their feature video on this stating that turning Google Chrome bypasses the BIOS startup. A few of my colleagues said this is impossible, but for what it's worth, this is Google we're talking about.
Original post on RWW: <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/googles_new_os_will_offer_remote_desktop_capabilities.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/googles_new_os_will_off...</a>
it sounds somewhat like a vnc plugin in addition to their native chrome applications (if these 'legacy' apps indeed run 'in the cloud'), but could also include wine for windows apps or perhaps a nested X server for native linux apps. but the majority of the article is speculation and a review of recent tech history, so who knows