Google Predicts Rise of Web OS in 2011

With the launch of ChromeOS, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has realized his long time dream of building a network computer, one that taps into the Internet and offers browser-based-network-hosted applications. My view, when it comes to the ChromeOS? Google should forget chasing the consumers and go hard after the corporate market – especially after verticals that need low-cost, zero-maintenance machines dedicated to a few tasks.

It looks like Google is headed in that direction. Yesterday, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company announced that IT administrators can deploy and optimize the Chrome browser to meet their specific corporate needs.

Today, we’re announcing that Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements. We’ve created an MSI installer that enables businesses who use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users. We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customize browser settings to manage security and privacy.

Coincidentally, manageability and security were two questions raised.  Today, Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise in a blog post, vividly paints the company’s cloud-future. He writes:

While many IT vendors have now adopted (or co-opted) the term “cloud computing” to describe a wide variety of technologies, most don’t deliver on the true promise of the cloud. Hosting single-tenant server products in a data center is not cloud computing. Nor is requiring customers to install thick client software. In a 100% web world, business applications are delivered over the Internet and accessed in a web browser.  Devices like notebooks, tablets, and smartphones are portals to the data that help people be productive from anywhere, at any time. 100% web is a dramatic shift from how companies have traditionally purchased, deployed, and managed IT. But the more we talk with customers the more we realize that this is the change they’ve been waiting for. If 2010 was the year of the cloud, 2011 looks to be the year of nothing but the web.

Google, he points out, is doing so through its various initiatives – Google Apps, App Engine, Chrome OS, Chrome Browser and Android. To most of you, this might seem plain as a day, but it’s refreshing to see Google articulate its big picture vision about the cloud and web-based computing.

The graphic on its blog post, which points to the company’s blog, makes it clear it’s in battle with Microsoft in this battle and in the end, it wants to end the PC past.