Conservatives and personal computing aficionados are still not convinced that the world is ready to move to cloud-enabled operating systems like Google's Chrome OS. Their skepticism is not simply borne out of their reluctance to accept change, though. Many of their arguments against the possibility of such cloud-based endeavors tasting success in the immediate future are perfectly tenable.
But it would be wrong to think that Google is betting on cloud computing in hope of immediate gains. It is probably concentrating on issues that it can sort out while waiting for others not in its control (including poor broadband penetration globally and privacy concerns) to sort themselves out over time.
For instance, many people have been wondering whether Chrome's early adopters will be able to abandon critical applications and features associated with traditional computing, especially if their web-based replacements simply turn out to be poor imitations. But Google does have a solution: “Chromoting.”
Chromoting is the internal name for Chrome OS's ability to run legacy PC apps from within the browser. The Google engineer who revealed it to the world likened Chromoting to Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection tool.
"We're adding new capabilities all the time. With this functionality (unofficially named 'chromoting'), Chrome OS will not only be [a] great platform for running modern web apps, but will also enable you to access legacy PC applications right within the browser,”Google software engineer Gary Kačmarčík said in a message.
