Google's Chrome OS, "cloud computing," and Africa

This whole "Google OS" thing is pretty weird. It's odd that they'd announce it so far in advance, with (seemingly) nothing at all to show for it -- no details, so screenshots, nothing. It's like they're announcing that they're going to start working on it...before too long.

Their approach to applications sounds distressingly similar to Apple's initial approach to the iPhone -- all webapps. Still, as has been pointed out in a variety of places by a number of people (PC World's Nick Mediati, Daring Fireball's John Gruber) just because it's web code doesn't mean it's just a webpage. The Palm Pre's whole OS runs (essentially) web code, but this includes applications hosted locally, and they have access to the device's hardware features in a way that true webapps running in a browser traditionally don't/can't. So this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

However, the fact that so much will likely be stored "in the cloud" is discomforting to some, and not without good reason.

But I have another concern with this, as someone currently based in Africa, where the connectivity is very, very poor. At a college campus in the US, sure, I had pretty ubiquitous connectivity. Anywhere it would occur to me to take out my laptop and use it, I had access to some sort of wifi or another. And that's likely true of a large number of people in the developed world. Most of the places they'll unpack their laptop -- at home, at work -- they've got easy wifi connectivity.

Sticking still to developed countries, though, what about on a train? A bus? The subway? These are even more significant when we consider netbooks, which seem to be the platform of choice for this new operating system. Perhaps Google expects integrated WAN in every netbook by the time they release their OS (and maybe they're right). However, I for one am too cheap to pay for a connection like that for a computer, especially when I already am for my phone. Granted tethering said smartphone is a possibility, but until US providers get their acts together and officially permit tethering, that's not realistic either (except for those of us, er, ahem, those people willing to stretch the TOS a little and tether anyway).

All of these connectivity concerns, especially relevant for ultraportable laptops, are magnified substantially when we consider the rest of the world. Of course, I freely admit that technology companies do not, for the most part, design high-profile products like this with the developing world in mind. But why not? Google clearly sees demand for search products in the developing world, as evidenced by the rollout of SMS search in Uganda last week. The demand for smartphones and laptops is there, too, albeit much less than in a Western country.

Yet in the few larger stores I have seen selling computers, the only machines they are selling are fairly large and fairly dated regular laptops, selling for more than they're worth. High prices aren't a surprise, but a netbook -- even sold for a bit more than it should really be worth* is still cheaper and not much different in specifications.

At any rate, the point I'm trying to make is that Google is acknowledging the demand for knowledge and connectivity (and therefore a market for the service they're in the business of providing) in places like sub-Saharan Africa. And I think they'd stand to benefit from pushing that further, with inexpensive, simple computers and an easy-to-use, brand new OS. They could carve out a huge new market for their OS by challenging Microsoft somewhere Windows is not as entrenched as in the developed world because no operating system is. But in my mind, that can't happen with an operating system that's only fully functional when it's connected to the Internet, because for the moment that's simply neither possible nor affordable here in Africa.

Maybe by the time this OS actually launches TEAMS, SEACOM, and some of the other planned undersea cables will actually exist and be lit, and East Africa will be swimming in bandwidth (compared to the present, at least). And given how much we know about the Chrome OS, it could very well be that long. But while I'm sure it will be a while, I doubt connectivity here will be much better by the time it ships. I just hope it's sufficiently web-independent to be useful to all of us who either don't want, can't afford, or simply don't have access to truly ubiquitous Internet, because I think a lightweight operating system for netbooks that both isn't Windows and is more accessible than today's Linux distros (see for instance the high return rates of Linux netbooks), is a good thing. And I think, except for the heavy reliance on connectivity I fear it will have, such an operating system combined with inexpensive computers could be a great thing someplace like this.

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*Note that I'm not suggesting it's the least bit OK to gouge 3rd-world markets for products and services they want/need just because they aren't widely available or anything like that. This is related, I think, to the arguments around the mobile/SMS pricing here -- it's useful enough that people will pay it, even if it's unreasonably high, and still arguably benefit from it (as they might from say, overpriced netbooks), but that doesn't make it good. Steve Song has a good article on it here.