Google has launched its Chromebook laptop, built “for the web only”, as the internet giant looks to take on Microsoft and Apple in the operating system market.
Through the new machines, Google is hoping to convince people to switch to storing data online instead of on hard drives, which they claim makes their new machines run significantly faster than traditional computers.
At its “I/O” developer conference this week, the company said the usual paraphernalia installed on PCs, such as software, applications and users’ saved data, can make them cumbersome.
Google claims the machines will take around eight seconds to power up and become usable and can run for a whole day on one full battery charge.
They will be on sale in the UK as well as the USA and five other European countries from mid-June and will be manufactured by Acer and Samsung, costing between $349 and $499.
In addition, Chromebooks will be available for $20 a month for students and $28 for enterprises in the US.
“Your apps, games, photos, music, movies and documents will be accessible wherever you are and you won’t need to worry about losing your computer or forgetting to back up files,” said Google’s Linus Upson, Vice President of Engineering and Sundar Pichai, Senior Vice President, Chrome.
Addressing fears that “the cloud” could be vulnerable to data-loss or lack of availability, the Google team added: “You could store all of your information on a hard-drive and one day drop it and lose everything or you could save it on the cloud and potentially lose internet connection for five minutes; I know which I prefer.”
“If there is no internet access, some apps can still be used, although they would have to have been downloaded over an internet connection beforehand,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice president for Chrome. He likened suggestions that the computer would be useless without an internet connection to “saying that a phone would be useless without a battery charger. Some applications would still work without an internet connection, users would still have access to their media, for example”.
He added: “The chances of someone being totally outside of any internet connection is pretty small. If you believe in the cloud, you will really like this. There are many people who don’t believe in it and that is fine but we believe that this is the right thing to do. Most people spend the vast majority of their time online when they use thier computers, anyway.”
Sergey Brin, the company’s co-founder said: “It’s a much easier way to compute… and Chromebook is venturing into a new model of computing that I don’t think was possible even a few years ago.
“Ultimately the most precious resource is the user’s time. I think the complexity of managing your computer is really torturing users out there. It is a flawed model and I think Chromebooks are a new model and this is the way things are going to be.”
