At the Google I/O 2011 conference yesterday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a point to outline why his company is taking on Microsoft in the operating system space. In short, he believes Windows is too much of a hassle to use and maintain, and that his company can offer a solution to this problem.
"I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with Windows ... Windows 7 has some great security features," Brin said according to GeekWire. Then he added: "With Microsoft, and other operating system vendors, I think the complexity of managing your computer is really torturing users ... It's torturing everyone in this room. It's a flawed model fundamentally."
Google yesterday announced the Chromebook, which refers to a mobile device running Google Chrome OS. As you can probably guess, the name comes from combining the words Chrome and notebook. Two Chromebooks, one from Acer and one from Samsung, are slated to be available for preorder on June 15, 2011 in seven countries: the US, the UK, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.
Microsoft has an Automatic Update feature in Windows, but Google of course believes its seamless updating mechanism (as shown in the video above) is superior. The company insists that keeping the computer up-to-date without any work on the part of the user, making management and updates essentially invisible, is critical.
This isn't the first time that Google has implied Chrome OS is superior to Windows. In October 2010, Google CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt trash talked Windows 7. In November 2010, the search giant claimed 60 percent of businesses could immediately replace their Windows machines with computers running Chrome OS.
Remember, these statements were being made before the Chromebook was even announced. Google may not be able to completely destroy Windows, but it's certainly trying to do as much damage as it can. We can only imagine what the company is going to push with its marketing campaigns around Chrome OS.