Google puts a big bet on Chrome, Part 2

8 December 2010 Alternative outcomes. When Google first talked about Chrome, low cost notebooks were all the rage. Today the focus is on more mobile devices like tablets, a market that has been re-ignited since early 2010 by Apple's iPad. The tablet is the natural home for the Android operating system which powers a multitude of smartphones and has given Apple's iPhone a run for its money. The existence of two Google OSes has led some to wonder if both are needed. Speaking at the web 2.0 Summit in November, Google boss Eric Schmidt is in no doubt that they are. Largely, he said, because they do distinctly different things. Chrome OS is being developed for devices with physical keyboards while Android is for touch devices. Industry watchers have said that with a growing appetite for tablets, Chrome may have already lost out to Android. Mr Pichai disagrees. "We come from a simple belief that if you can create a great experience for users the market follows from that," he said. "What the iPad validates to me is that people are looking for what I call different computer alternatives," he said. "No-one lives with the iPad as their only computing device. But it has created excitement around additional computing and we plan to do the same." Notebooks running Chrome from the likes of HP, Acer and Asus were expected before Christmas but have now been delayed until 2011. The reason for the delay is very simple, said Mr Pichai. "We aren't fully ready yet," he admitted. "We started working on this 18 months ago and we have made tremendous progress but we aren't all the way there," he told BBC News. "There are still some features we want to add and also the system still has some crashes and bugs we need to resolve before we ship it out." "It is more of a traditional beta software quality at this stage," he said. "When we ship, we want to ship a finished consumer product." Old habits. So has Google bitten off more than it can chew and is the public ready for computing that relies so heavily on the cloud? "It requires a change in thinking about it," said Mr Epson. "We are doing something that is pretty different than what's happened before and whenever you do that it takes people some time to adjust. "That is the biggest thing we have had to overcome and will continue to have to overcome," he said. Google believes its entry into a mature market will present challenges for its competitors but most importantly choice for consumers. "For us success means being able to reach tens of millions of users over time, so we expect this to have an impact," said Mr Pichai. "I don't think of it as throwing down the gauntlet. I want to raise the bar and Chrome did that in several areas of browsing and with Chrome OS you will see us raising the bar significantly. "The key challenge has been time," he said. "I wish we had more time. "What keeps me up at night is we are entering the PC space in which people have 30 years of legacy expectations where old habits die hard," he said. "We are worried people will stick with the safe and familiar and comfortable but confident that if people used Chrome for a week or two they would choose that." By Maggie Shiels Source: BBC News (bbc.co.uk/news)