Embracing Google Chrome as the Workspace

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz over the netbook market.  While there have been a lot of entrants into this sphere, the one who has possibly made the biggest splash- and hasn’t even officially released anything yet- is Google, with their touted Chrome OS.  For anyone who has followed the Chrome OS saga, it (obviously) looks very much like their Google Chrome browser, and essentially has Google banking on the cloud, with GMail, Google Docs, and other online tools providing the majority of the applications.  Local cached versions would depend upon Google Gears or HTML5.  Google’s latest endeavor reminds me of Oracle’s failed NetPC initiative of over 10 years ago.  The difference is that Google is banking on the more open Internet, as opposed to the NetPC dependence on closed corporate networks.

To Google’s credit, they have been providing a plethora of useful online tools; GMail is arguably the best web-based email, and Google Docs is a flexible office productivity suite that is gaining ground as an alternative to Microsoft and Open Office. I have found myself over the last couple of months buying into the idea of moving my data out to the cloud.  Being a GMail user, Google’s solutions were a natural fit since they were already available to me for free.

The biggest change in my personal workflow that I was looking to do in moving to the cloud was with regards to my writing.  Before, I would maintain a copy of my documents on my laptop, and using a Microsoft Mesh client would sync them out to my Skydrive for backup.  However, if I wanted to move to another computer, it would be “easiest” to copy the documents to a USB thumbdrive, and then try to maintain the different versions and not accidentally overwrite newer files.  In short, I figured that their had to be a better way.

Parallel to this was the evolution of Google Chrome for Windows.

Google Chrome has become my web browser of choice, wrestling that crown from Firefox, which had been a favorite since the 0.99 days.  Chrome initially won me over with its speed and simplicity.  The 1.x version was lean- a little too lean- although things improved with 2.x and 3.x.  But what really made Chrome soar were two features: bookmark sync and extensions.

The former was a revelation to use.  I never cared for the bookmark toolbar implementation on Firefox; the UI looked cluttered and the whole thing lacked elegance.  On Chrome, with its slick, streamlined UI, the bookmark bar not only made sense, it became an integral part of the experience.  The only caveat was repeatedly setting up your bookmarks on new machines.  Bookmark sync uses your Google Docs account to sync your bookmarks across your various Chrome sessions.  Not only is it a huge time-saver, but changes sync up quickly and follow you from PC to PC (or across OSes, such as Windows to Linux).

Extensions were the biggest advantage Firefox had over Internet Explorer, and were a huge boon to my computing needs.  Finally making their official debut in Chrome 4.0, extensions are implemented on Chrome with a few key differences.  The biggest is that extensions could be installed or removed on-the-fly, and quickly, without the need for restarting the browser.  The other is that the extensions are lightweight scripts that do not bog down Chrome’s performance once you have several installed.  Chrome has simply remained fast throughout its various iterations, suffering none of the bloat that Firefox was plagued with through its 2.x phase.  This has allowed me to really embrace Chrome as more than just a web browser; I’ve begun to use Chrome as a workspace, where if I boot up my laptop I wind up spending the majority of my time there.

It started with my Bookmarks bar. I placed all the sites that I regularly visit on there.  Using a tip from my boss (who is a Chrome user and originally introduced me to it), I removed the names of the bookmarks, maximizing the number I could have.  I also have a Tumblr bookmarklet that I keep, in order to quickly share content I find across the Internet to my blog. Since I use Google as my primary search engine (and yes, I have given others a chance over the last couple of years, such as Live / Bing and Cuil, but none have matched Google for accuracy or depth of searches), Chrome’s Omnibar (the souped-up address bar) is perfect, as I have gotten used to just typing in my queries there and launching searches. For extensions, I use a number; Delicious and Evernote for links and notetaking, respectively; Wikipedia Visual Search to quickly and easily look up Wikipedia articles; Chromed Bird for instant Twitter access; ChromeMuse allows me to shorten URLs into Bit.ly format with a click; and Facebook Dashboard, eBay, and Google Mail Checker Plus.  Couple this with Chrome’s speed, I have the perfect workspace for my needs and personal workflow.

Because of this, I can understand the lure of Chrome OS.  We have come to depend so much upon the Internet, and lured in by the promise of data easily accessible everywhere, that an operating system that breaks away from decades of monolithic design and exists as a workspace on the web is not only tempting, it makes sense. However, are we really at the point to make that transition? Certainly not for our everyday personal machines.  Chrome OS does not make sense for gaming or entertainment outside of music or light video viewing (such as YouTube).   But as an OS for our work machines?  Definitely.

Will corporations adopt Chrome OS? I don’t believe so, unless the word processing and spreadsheet applications in Google Docs become very feature-rich (on par with their thick client cousins).  Plus, you’ll never be able to do certain things on a cloud OS that a business may need, such as photo and video editing, terminal emulation, or development, to name a few. Something like Chrome OS fits a niche, perhaps in the case of business continuity planning / disaster recovery (boot up from a flash drive and be up and running in a minute or two).

And along those lines, Chrome makes sense to me as a workspace, almost as a desktop shell replacement that can work on Windows, Linux or MacOS.  The only thing Chrome is currently missing is extension syncing (syncing my extensions and configuration just as with bookmarks).  Given time, I would not be surprised to see this happen.

How about you? Have you found a similar methodology that works for you?  Please share your experiences, I’d love to hear it.

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