Web Operating Systems: A View of the Ecosystem
July 10, 2009
Filed Under: in Analysis, Featured Articles, Mobile, News, Palm Pre
Author: Nate D'Amico
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Now that Google has publically tossed their hat in the ring with Chrome OS web based operating systems are the way of the future, at least thats what most of the coverage around the web thinks as everyone pits Google against Microsoft for future of our OS salvation.
I thought it would be a good time to cover the current state of the ecosystem and look at the activity that's been happening for the past few years. The main goal of a "web operating system" is to provide a technology stack that empowers developers to use web standards (http/html/js/css) to deliver solutions to consumers and businesses. Web development has proved itself to be the fastest method for developing, testing and getting solutions to market. With the adoption of more powerful computers and faster connections we are at a time now when the experience delivered via the web can meet/surpass that of the desktop in most use cases.
To get it out of the way lets cover the Chrome OS real quick. First question is why have two mobile/portable device OS's with two different brands/efforts? Hopefully they get their act together and just merge Chrome and Android together making the Chrome part just a UI on top. A fantastic move would be for them to adopt JSR-290 from the Java world and support it for both OS's. Android would greatly benefit and win some hearts in the development community and make for a fantastic environment to play in. Just like when Android was announced the Big G is announcing Chrome OS way out in front to see what kind of buzz they can drive. Google says that they "are talking to several manufacturers" about their Chrome OS..., how bout you just focus on getting all those Android devices you 
are talking up to market before you move on to the next hot thing?
Now to have a look at a few players and technologies that have been moving in this space for some time. Google's move validates what they have been working on for the past couple of years. Some of these technologies are not full "web operating systems" in a strict sense, but prove technology that makes a browser central to the user experience and solution delivery.
Palm has unleashed their webOS for the Pre. A couple years back Palm started re-architecting a new operating system to run their new generation of devices they plan on bringing to market. The entire UI and experiences is web standards driven powered by the favorite webkit open source rendering engine. The base of the stack is a Linux kernel and they provide their own JavaScript framework for interacting with native hardware such as GPS/location, camera, accelerometer, etc. Not much else is known as they have early adopters in the dev world under wraps. They recently updated their terms of service to allow for more communication about their dev kit so expect some more info soon. It is safe to say that Palm is the current undisputed king of the web OS world. Besides the fact that their OS is called webOS, they have it released to the public on a few hundred thousand devices already and plans for rapid expansion throughout the rest of the year. The big question for next year will be Will Palm license the OS to other device manufacturers?
Appcelerator is a bay area Open Source startup has been working on a family of products dubbed Titanium. While not a full operating system Titanium allows developers to create and deliver a rich and advanced experience in their applications that can be developed once and deployed across a range of environments from Windows, Mac and a newer offering in early testing that runs on mobile devices, initially the iPhone and Android. It would not be too far of a reach for these guys to get their stack booting up off a Linux stack running on some portable devices. A cool feature provided by their framework is the ability to write code snippets that can be executed via JavaScript calls to take advantage of native device hardware.
Yahoo! has been working on their Browser Plus effort. The project aims to provide developers with a platform to "write once" and deliver browser solutions that take advantage of the native hardware and OS. It is a pretty ambitious project and Yahoo! is following suit with their other developer tools such as their very popular YUI JavaScript library and open sourcing it. This is another example of something that is not a full blown web OS but provides the building blocks to developers to feature rich web based solutions. Slap it into a webkit based solution that boots off a Linux environment and you have yourself a powerful solution for developers and device MFG's. Google has a similar effort in its Native Client project which most likely will end up being a core piece to the Chrome OS.
There are several more technologies and frameworks out their providing web solutions for developers on top of other OS's and platforms. Two startups focused on mobile are Nitobi and their PhoneGap solution and RhoMobile.
Anyway you slice and dice, and what tags and buzz words you want to put on the next generation of OS's frameworks out there web standards are the core focus for dev and delivery.
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