Why is it that Chrome OS is a doomed project?

The Chrome OS is the next-generation operating system for desktop PCs in the previous years, which is designed to achieve the ambitious goal of "computing resources on Demand", in contrast to the traditional Windows system, by replacing traditional local applications with online applications. However, after years of practice and promotion, Chrome OS did not reach the original supporters of the target, considering Google's own strong resource integration capabilities, Chrome OS in the real market results can only be described in a dismal. What is this all about?

The author in previous articles or comments has been stressing the role of "efficiency", if only from the perspective of efficiency to consider this issue, "Computing resources on Demand" this thing should have a very large market value to:

The traditional computing equipment needs to run the application software locally, as the software function becomes more and more powerful, the user needs to compute the performance more and more, but it is restricted by the volume limit of the personal computing equipment, the performance of the personal computing equipment will have the day when it reaches the limit. In fact, the current personal computing equipment market has been the hardware performance can not keep pace with the development of software features trend. And because it is impossible to accurately measure the individual's demand for computing resources, so the major computing equipment manufacturers can only continue to launch a variety of performance beast to meet the consumer needs of most users, which indirectly led to a large number of computational resources redundant and waste.

Chrome OS provides an online application to focus the user's computing performance needs on the cloud's service provider, and the service provider can then allocate its own computing resources according to the different needs of the user. The entire service process not only solves the problem of insufficient computational performance, but also maximizes the avoidance of redundancy and waste of computing resources, and this process significantly improves the utilization efficiency of computing resources and has great innovation value to the traditional computing resource market.

However, efficiency is not the only factor determining the value of the project-"The weakness of human nature", although it sounds very illusory, but in the actual level of human society to affect the development and progress. The most obvious examples are:

If, in the eternal pursuit of efficiency, common production on demand for communism is the most efficient social model of the human world, considering the problem in an idealized perspective, the entire human population should be very easy to "unite together to respond to global warming, new energy development and other global problems" to reach a consensus and put into action, But why is there such a big gap between the actual situation and the ideal state? The answer can only be the weakness of human nature that affects people to make the most logical and rational decision.

Back to the original question: Why didn't Chrome OS replace windows as the mainstream operating system for desktop PCs in practical applications? There is a significant difference between the point of view of the user and the service provider:

I don't care about spending more money on a server that sets aside the computing performance of the next few years, so I'm not afraid to keep up with the need for performance. The main question is, in the event of your server being compromised, will the information I have with you disappear forever? Instead of putting my "computing power" in the hands of your service provider, it's better to take care of yourself.

So from this point of view, I think that the Chrome OS is an overly idealistic goal, there is no possibility of full implementation. Similarly, there are automatic driving techniques, ideally, a city full of automatic driving can really solve the problem of building congestion (improving the efficiency of road traffic), but people have an unparalleled fear of "handing over their lives to computers". You can imagine that if a safety accident occurs in the autopilot system, people will lose their sanity and increase the nature of this probabilistic event to the height of autopilot technology. In contrast to the doomed failure of the Chrome OS project, there is a chance of success in self-driving technology, but it is very, very difficult (the human society needs to ease road traffic pressure far more than the replacement computer operating system).

Written here, has basically completed the answer to the title of this article. However, I would like to say a little bit of a messy topic, if you reader too wordy words can be stopped by clicking on the page in the top right corner of the Red Fork.

Google or Tencent, in fact, has a very strong ability to integrate resources, but they are certainly not perfect (and there is no perfect), they have in the more than 10 20 years of development in the process has also made countless hindsight very low-level mistakes.

How should we look at the problem so as to avoid "mistakes"? Then take the Chrome OS project for example, and a lot of people just see it to improve the efficiency of computing resources and companies such as Google, the advantage of absolutely reliable, but can not find or simply selectively ignore the "human weakness" for this project's significant adverse impact.

This, of course, has something to do with personal experience and ability, but I don't think that's the point, you need to develop a habit of "being good at throwing off appearances to find the real motive or logic of events," and then you have to form a basic cognitive theory that nothing can happen without reason, Any complex event or thing can be found by a major underlying clue to their original origin. These do not need any special ability, as long as the level of mind rashness patient accumulation, it will naturally understand the meeting.

About predicting the future such a thing may many people will backwards disagree, but you can not deny the objective existence of the law, and according to the past development of the law to predict its future development trend seems to be able to say. I would like to be here to lose character, interested in and have some experience in the future development of relevant industries to do a trend forecast, if the luck, if the wrong also hope Haihan (would like to be interested in the discussion with friends): 1

From what I originally put out in the "social product should not forget" idea, the human population through the exchange of communication behavior (transfer of ideas to resolve differences) to establish a close relationship, so that the population level of efficient production to meet the needs of material consumption, so no matter in any era, Social communication needs will be an important requirement within human society. Technological development does make the social communication process more convenient and efficient, but for some reason there is no further connection between people, I think this is not only the present problem, but also the future development of science and technology industry opportunities.

On the other hand, people out of the "productive and living efficiency" of the eternal Pursuit (energy conservation Law limited efficiency can not reach 100%), will never stop the "scientific and technological potential" of the excavation. The miniaturization of personal computing terminals + mobile Internet has ushered in a new information age in which production and life efficiency have increased dramatically, but this is clearly not the end point.

The information Communication system of human society can be divided into three parts: information itself, communication channel, information processing (terminal) equipment. The author thinks that the first two items almost no longer have a very large optimization space, in the foreseeable future, the optimization of information processing (terminal) equipment will be the main means to further enhance the efficiency of the communication system.

Smartphones have been computing more than a generation of hundreds of thousands of times, smartphones + mobile internet to make "anytime, anywhere production and processing information" has become a reality, then in the post-smartphone era, what kind of information processing equipment than smartphones to improve efficiency? The question is not difficult to answer, the smartphone also needs to be "hand-eye is free" under the premise of the use, then the next generation of products is able to liberate hand-eye equipment.

In this way, the next generation of intelligent terminal product form is wearable equipment, but the current development trend of wearable equipment is not very good ah, this is why? Because none of them has yet found a solution that completely frees the user's hand-eye "wearable device non-contact handling process." To be blunt, the key issue in deciding whether or not the next generation of smart devices will have a future (or when it is going to explode) is not that the hardware can not meet the computing needs of the user, but whether the real "non-contact manipulation process" can be realized early.

Whether it be voice control or brain wave control or integrated manipulation (software) systems, it will greatly improve the efficiency of using intelligent hardware devices to produce/process information. Yet there is a more efficient system in the world than "non-contact control systems" that can help people improve production/processing information, that is, artificial intelligence.

In theory, artificial intelligence has huge computational power and absolute reason never make mistakes great advantage, can help people to further improve production and life efficiency (the current so-called artificial intelligence field of practical application can only be the most elementary, but still have effect). But our current research on artificial intelligence is still in the initial stage, whether the artificial intelligence of consciousness will appear or unknown, to what extent AI can develop (whether controllable) is also no clue (trend forecast here is over OH).

The author is actually AI enthusiasts and absolute supporters, I believe that artificial intelligence will eventually break through the "emergence of self-awareness," the singularity, and then help the human society into a more developed and more civilized development stage. What, you say in case the artificial intelligence out of human control, into the movie "Skynet" to destroy the human how to do? Don't say I think this worry is in the "unfounded", even if we ultimately can not avoid the fate of artificial intelligence replaced, it is still necessary to risk the advent of artificial intelligence, as for the reason why, to say afraid to scare you:

With the depletion of the Earth's resources, human weakness will limit the progress of human society, human beings may not be able to rely on their own awareness to achieve unity to deal with the degree of crisis, artificial intelligence can help human society to achieve efficient production to avoid waste of resources, to prolong the existence of human civilization, Wait for one day the development of technology will bring us the final solution ...