Google CEO Eric Schmidt Talks Chrome OS

15 Apr 2010 by Graham Lyons - News Chrome, Chrome OS, Eric Schmidt, google No Comments

To say Google is an important company is to ever so slightly undersell what is arguably one of the most influential forces operating online today. When their famous senior execs talk about their vision for the future then the whole world tends to listen, after all decisions made at this high level have the capacity to impact us all.

Eric Schmidt

With this in mind, there is a new video in the “eventsatgoogle” channel on Youtube of Google CEO Eric Schmidt being interviewed in front of a live audience, the topics discussed are wide ranging and are really very interesting.

For me, some of the most intriguing points are the snippets of information that it is possible to glean from Mr Schmidt's comments about the upcoming Chrome OS and its associated platforms:

“What’s really important right now is to get the mobile architecture right”

“..mobility will ultimately be the way in which you provision most of your services”

The idea that the future will have mobility as its default position must be both unsettling and even unsurprising for many companies. Mobile devices are becoming more and more powerful and so their inclusion in businesses as the platform of choice is understandable, but how this transitions from the current systems is something that Google appears to be trying to solve in one fell swoop.

One other interesting point was the positive note in which Mr Schmidt talked about the manner in which the new HTML5 standards were received, they should allow app development that is less virus sensitive:

“Google having gone through a very sophisticated attack is particularly now paranoid about this kind of stuff”

It seems the ripples felt from the recent Google hacking incident are still being felt within the company.

When talking about the actual devices that the new Chrome OS would be delivered on Eric Schmidt painted a picture of a radically different experience for users:

“The promise of Chrome and Chrome OS is that the devices you give to your employees will have a 2 seconds boot time, that they’d be completely disposable, and of course the price point is incredibly low”

When pushed on what that actually meant in real terms Mr Schmidt suggested that current net book prices were in the right ballpark, though that the specific prices would be up to the individual manufacturers.

With all the confidence shown by Google it was impressive to see the scale of the task they have embarked on was not lost on this experienced executive:

“if you think about it, there has not been a new successful platform in this space in 20 years”

Finally, one of the nuggets of information about how Google really views itself actually comes at the start of the video –when talking about Google Apps the interviewer basically asks why Google would take their eye-off-the-ball from search. Mr Schmidt is clear about Google’s place:

“People think of Google as a search company, Google is an information company”

Here is the video, if you can spare 40 mins to watch the whole thing then its well worth it. If you just want the Chrome OS bit then that starts around 11 minutes in.