Cloud computing, and Googles new OS.

Miscellaneous General
1

I can’t help but make a thread about this. I noticed Mr Tucker had made a blog post today on Mises.org concerning Googles new OS. He exclaims happily that competition has been provided in the market to battle Microsoft. I think this is great also.

However, I feel obliged to make a comment on the state of future operating systems, and cloud computing in general. Here is my respone to Mr Tuckers blog post below:

Jeff -I would like your opinion on this if you get a chance.

I find it exciting also that competition is coming from Google. However when you take a closer look at the OS itself, we find a potential flaw in its design.

Here’s a quote from an article talking about the new Chrome OS by Google:

“Even more interesting, however, is the revelation that the heart of the Chrome OS user experience is Google’s Chrome browser — and that booting a Chrome OS device should get you “onto the Web in seconds,” according to the search giant’s press release. In fact, the browser may be the only traditional application that runs on Chrome OS.

Quote the release: “For application developers, the Web is the platform” (emphasis mine).This sounds an awful lot like the type of device I’ve talked about before, which I’ve dubbed “the Invisible PC.” Rather than the traditional desktop model of applications running on a monolithic OS, in this new mode of computing the PC will all but disappear, leaving little more than a window to the Web. Desktop applications will be replaced by Web-based services, with computation and storage handled in the cloud.”

http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/chrome-os-cloud-computing-made-real-660?page=0,1

Of course it boils down to consumer reaction whether or not Google’s competition in the world of operating systems will match Microsoft’s, however does anyone but me see a tremendous problem with the way they’re designing their OS? According to the article cited above, and of futurist think tanks, a more “centralized” computing experience is inevitable.

What’s more, is that it’s not just the competition making this move (Google), but Microsoft has openly stated their decision to embark on “Cloud Operating Systems” as they evolve as-well.

What this boils down to is less personal control over the computer, and more centralized, planned technological experiences for the masses. If this is the inevitable reality of the not too distant future, I want nothing to do with it, especially under the tyranny we live today.

What are your thoughts on this? I can’t imagine too many people, especially from a libertarian point of view, will feel very excited that all their personal information, and personal control over computing will become more centeralized on a companies server database?!

2

This has become less and less true since the first computer. Processing power and storage capabilites keep increasing on all things electronic. We’ve seen more of an evolution away from centralized computing, towards distributed computing. Heck, even different jobs are given to different systems based on the basic principle of comparative advantage.

I believe he would have been more correct to say “intertwined” instead of “centralized”.

3

I agree fully with you concerning the fact that since computers hit the consumer market, it has moved towards a less centralized enviorment. The creation and improvement of operating systems like Linux, have created remarkable results for freedom of information.

However the cloud computing future is anything but this.

Then again, who needs privacy anymore right? In fact, you must be antisocial.

4

There are distributed projects such as Seti@Home and Folding@Home which actually use the computer power of clients to do their processing. Cloud computing is in some ways an extension of grid computing, including more computers and taking on more tasks, while being flexible. I imagine the cloud will grow large enough and be dynamic enough that even the clients who connect to it will be able to give back some of their processing power. That’s what I mean by “intertwined”. It’ll be everywhere, but it will be one. Kind of like the Borg Collective, but for comptuers. Kind of eerie now that I think about it.

Privacy will be an issue. That’s why my favorite policy for online privacy is “offline” :wink:

5

@OP: I wouldn’t worry too awful much. Computing is very much unlike electrical power or manufacturing in that scale results in computational diseconomies. Yes, you can economize on power consumption and floor space by creating server farms and data warehouses but the reality is that most of the things that people use their computers for do not benefit from centralization. Will my email operate faster or will my emails remain more secure if the email client runs on a remote server? Will my point-and-shoot games look better? Will my business software run more efficiently with less downtime? And so on. Centralizing computation does nothing to solve any of these problems.

The self-appointed experts have been predicting since the dawn of computers that there is a massive centralization coming. I find this very doubtful because the cost-benefit ratio just isn’t there. The savings in terms of watts expended per computation or floorspace or number of server blades and so on are very marginal. The costs are that you have to give up control of your own information. Smart corporations are moving in the opposite direction, housing any and all sensitive data on-site in physically secured servers because they understand that co-locating your data is a huge legal and business risk. Would you just store the deed to your land anywhere? If you were shopping for a place to store it, would you not consider security and what happens in the event that it is lost or destroyed or, worse, transferred to someone else (remember, if your data is leaked, it can be freely copied without limit in the modern, digital age).

As I said, I wouldn’t be overly-worried.

Clayton -

6

The fact remains that you’re storing your personal data with other people who you can “trust”. Google has known ties to the NSA, why would people trust it?

We must also remember Google is a company worth billions. I find it hard to believe obtaining server space would be difficult for them, especially if the consumer is paying a monthly fee of some kind.

Concerning your point about making programs and games run faster, this is the whole point of what they’re advertising. They’re claiming all of this. And it’s probably going to be true.

Pay attention at the 2:15 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QRO3gKj3qw

7

Well, I work in the industry (I am a validation engineer at Intel) and I understand the technical details the video is hinting at… it’s just not something to worry about. The idea of storing your data “out there” is actually older than the idea of storing your data locally since the earliest computers were large mainframes and you had to log in through what was called a “dumb terminal” which stored no data locally. Google is, I think, correct that more data will be synched to remote servers since people want to access the same data with multiple devices but I don’t think there is any economy-of-scale advantage that will drive users to outsource all their data and compute needs to centralized data warehouses and server farms. The security needs of individuals and corporations will change, however, and I think that Google’s version of cloud-computing utterly and completely fails to address this (how do I keep Google from accidentally letting hackers have access to my private data?)

Clayton -