How Google killed my excitement in operating system upgrades
The first time I heard about ChromeOS was back in 2009 when Sundar Pichai showed off an early version of the operating system. At the time, I remember thinking that you could get away with using that system for some tasks but it would limit you in terms of desktop apps, what I did really like about it though were all the security features Google had built in.
As outlined in the video below, which was released around the time of Pichai’s keynote, Chrome tabs were sandboxed to reduce exploits, and the underlying operating system had security measures in place such as atomic updates and verified boot to ensure it hadn’t been tampered with. Building it from the ground up, Google was able to make sure ChromeOS systems were very secure.
ChromeOS was promising something much different from what Apple, Microsoft and major Linux distributions were offering at the time, for example, I can still remember upgrading my iMac at the time to Snow Leopard using a physical disc. At the time, ChromeOS didn’t feel quite complete, but after 15 years of maturation, it looks great, fast internet speed allows for quick updates, and web apps have diminished the need for desktop software.
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