Google Chrome OS press event, 11/19

    Now, Q&A:

    What will a Chrome OS netbook cost?

    Google won't say. "We expect to have devices in the price ranges people are used to today. … You will see larger netbooks than you are seeing today."

    Someone asks what Chrome OS was running on today: it was an off-the-shelf EeePC.

    How will manufacturers sign up to build a Chrome OS machine? Google has info online. Developers? There's info online. Standards? Google is working with the W3C. No clear answer on APIs. In general we want to see all of this get standardized.

    Will there be an app store? What about drivers? What about photo editing or video editing apps?

    No answer on the app store. There are hundreds of millions of applications on the web already. Google is working on drivers. On the third question, Google is focused on making the Chrome machine a second machine. It might be the primary device in terms of the amount of time you spend, but there will be things that this won't do. If you're a lawyer editing contracts all day, this won't be the machine for you.

    Will Google support Silverlight? Google doesn't answer, but seem to leave the door open to it.

    How will other browsers run on the machine? They won't. By open-sourcing it, Google is making it possible for someone else to make an OS version based on another browser. Interesting. So, no – no other browsers will run on Chrome OS. The browser is the operating system. (Neither Microsoft nor Apple would get away with this.)

    Will this run on more robust machines than netbooks? It could. But for the next year or so, Google is focused on things that look like netbooks.

    Will it work when you're not online? You'll be able to cache stuff locally. With HTML5 offline capabilities, that will work too. Google is focused on WiFi as the primary connectivity option. They don't answer whether they're working on cellular too.

    Will there be native apps? Our current plan is to only support web apps.

    Will Chrome run on ARM? It will work on both x86 and ARM.

    How long before this works on more powerful machines? And is there a business model besides sending more traffic to Google? No business model that he's speaking of. He didn't answer the question about when it will work on full-fledged PCs.

    Is there anything you can do with a Chrome OS machine that you can't do with a laptop? (Good question.) The answer isn't too coherent. Aside from instant-on and security stuff, there's not much difference between running the Chrome browser on another PC, and running a Chrome OS PC.

    Will the data cacheing be open? (I didn't catch the answer to this question. But I suspect the answer is no; these machines will be locked into Google.)

    No drivers. Keyboards and mice will work. Chrome OS will print. (An easy way to do this would be to keep the drivers in the cloud and create a USB receiver that hooks into a printer or other devices.)

    The Q&A is over.