"Gazelle."
(Click here for a larger view of Google's Chrome)Google announced last night that it will release open source code for its new "Google Chrome Operating System" later this year, and ship a final version in the second half of 2010. Although similarly derived from a Linux kernel and offered as open source software, the Chrome OS is separate from the company's existing Android, says a blog entry by Google VP, Product Management, Sundar Pichai, and Engineering Director Linus Upson.
Whereas Android was designed to scale from cellphones "to set-top boxes to netbooks," according to the blog, the lightweight Chrome OS will range from "small netbooks to full-size desktop systems," and be marketed for "people who spend most of their time on the web." The blog did note, however, that there could be some overlap between the two platforms.
According to Google, its Chrome browser (see below for further details) is already used by 30 million people after only nine months on the market. Chrome OS is billed as a "natural extension" of the Chrome browser, as well as "our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be," says the blog.
The Chrome OS will be characterized by "speed, simplicity and security." It will offer a minimal UI, as well as boot-up to the web in only a few seconds, says Google. In addition, Chrome OS will be free of viruses, malware, and security updates, the blog entry claims.
Running on both x86 and ARM processors, Google Chrome OS is touted as offering a simple architecture that consists of "Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel," says the blog. Software development will take advantage of typical web tools, and the resulting applications will also run on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux OSes, "giving developers the largest user base of any platform."
A Microsoft response?The idea that customers want an OS that can't run legacy applications, and that presumably requires a live Internet connection for many of its operations, is open to question. However, it's widely rumored that Microsoft will respond to the Chrome OS announcement next week by announcing the public rollout of its Office Web software, and perhaps by showing off a rearchitected browser known as "Gazelle."
Next week sees Microsoft's
Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 (WPC 2009), which runs from Jul. 13 to 16 in New Orleans, and at which a who's who of company executives is scheduled to speak. In a
widely cited Friendfeed posting, noted blogger and former Microsoft technical evangelist Robert Scoble writes, "Why did Google announce Chrome OS this week? Well, of course, Microsoft has a big announcement coming on Monday (I'm embargoed)."
Meanwhile, current Microsoft evangelist Keith Combs
posted on his Twitter feed yesterday that "I did some impressive stuff with some new (secret) Microsoft software last night. Can't tell you about it until end of [the] week."
These hints may well relate to a public rollout of Microsoft's Office Web software.
First announced last October at the company's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, Office Web will "deliver Office Web applications -- lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote -- through a browser," Microsoft says. "With these new applications, people can use a browser to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents," the company adds.
Microsoft's Web-based Word (left) and OneNote (right)
(Click either to enlarge)As pictured above, the Web-based Office applications will be designed to resemble their traditional desktop cousins as closely as possible. According to Microsoft, they'll be delivered to consumers through Office Live, in both ad-funded and subscription-based versions. Meanwhile, it's said business customers will be offered Office Web applications as both a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements.
GazelleMeanwhile, a more radical riposte to Google's efforts could come in the form of "Gazelle," a browser that -- unlike Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google's Chrome, for that matter -- has been designed from the ground up to act like a self-contained operating system. First unveiled via
a paper released in February by Microsoft Research, Gazelle offers a "browser kernel" (5,000 lines of C# code) amounting to "an operating system that exclusively manages resource protection and sharing across web site principals."
A typical web page includes many "principals"
Source: Microsoft ResearchAccording to
a Microsoft Research article by Janie Chang, "A Web page might offer content such as ads or newsfeeds from other Web-site principals [illustrated above]. Yet to the browser, all these principals coexist in the same process or protection domain. An ad containing malicious or poorly written code could hog the network connection, degrade performance, freeze the entire page, or crash the browser. In a browser operating system, a 'bad' principal would not be allowed to affect other principals, the browser, or the host machine."
Gazelle architecture
Source: Microsoft ResearchAs pictured above, Gazelle would not be designed to replace Windows. However, the browser kernel would place each principal into its own protection domain, so that misbehaving or malicious code could never crash other principals, the browser kernel, or the host system.
Chang writes, "Gazelles architecture cleanly separates between the act of rendering Web content and the policies of how to display the content. This cross-principal display protection is in stark contrast to commodity browsers that enable these two functions to intermingle, leading to security vulnerabilities."
Gazelle's chief designer, Microsoft researcher Helen Wang, has reportedly been keen to stress that the browser is currently just research, not yet an product protoype nor a replacement for Internet Explorer. Current plans call for a paper about Gazelle to be presented next month at the
Usenix Security Symposium in Montreal.
Nonetheless, it's rumored that Microsoft's WPC 2009 could well see further discussion of Gazelle. Certainly, the security and stability holes that Microsoft Research has uncovered in present-day web browsers seriously calls into question the viability of any operating system that would be based on them.
Background on Google ChromeIntroduced last September as an open source browser for Windows, Google Chrome was released in a developers version for Linux and MacOS last month. Chrome features a new JavaScript engine, a private browsing mode, and tabs whose memory areas are protected from one another. Each tab is said to operate as a separate process, so if one tab crashes or otherwise misbehaves, the browser will remain stable, Google claims.
The Chrome browser is based on
WebKit, a lightweight mobile HTML rendering engine derived from the
KHTML rendering engine maintained by the KDE project. Webkit is perhaps best-known for its use behind the scenes in Windows, OS X, and iPhone versions of Apple's Safari browser. It has also been used by Adobe, which based its AIR (
Adobe Integrated Runtime) toolsuite on it, by Google's earlier
Android software stack for Linux-based smartphones, and by Torch Mobile's
Iris Browser for Windows Mobile, among other products.
Comments?Since Google's Chrome OS is mere vaporware at this point, we don't see the need to comment on it further. We'll leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions about its suitability -- especially for mission-critical embedded systems that might not always be connected to the Internet.
For a positive but thoughtful quick take on Chrome OS, however, you'll find an analysis by Eric Brown of our sister site
LinuxDevices.com,
here.
Meanwhile, veteran Microsoft watchers Mary-Jo Foley and Harry McCracken offer lists of critical questions about Google's announcement on their blogs
here and
here, respectively.
Google's blog entry announcing the Chrome OS can be found
here.
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