Google announces cloud computing operating system will be completely open source
Updated: 2009-11-20
Internet search provider and software developer Google announced Thursday during a live webcast that the code of its new operating system designed to apply the principles of cloud computing to the entire personal computer platform will be laid completely bear to open source developers.
As of Thursday, the company announced, all external developers working on the new operating system will be working on the same code tree as internal developers.
"Whatever we do will be in the open, and we are really looking forward to working with the open source community to help drive this forward," said Google senior vice president of product management Sundar Pichai.
The idea behind the new operating system, called Google Chrome OS, will be to bring all personal computing functions into the cloud. All applications, including media players, content managers and document editors, as well as all data storage will be hosted online.
Google's release of an operating system based entirely around cloud computing could be the ultimate challenge to Microsoft's dominance in the software field. Previous releases such as the Google Chrome web browser and Google Apps compete directly with established Microsoft offerings such as Internet Explorer and Office, but an entire operating system would be the most extensive challenge yet.
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