A few years ago I went into lengths both on OSNews and on my personal blog evangelizing the basic ideas behind a cloud-based OS, and specifically claiming that Google is the company that can make that true. The comments back then were ranging from “it will never going to happen”, to “it’s not feasible”, to “you are dreaming”.
Finally, Google announced last night the Chrome OS. While I feel vindicated about it, it’s true that such an OS does not fit all shoes and it does raise privacy concerns. For example, doing video editing in such an environment would be a pain in the bum. Other actions though, e.g. emailing, might be better.
As for privacy, I think we are going past that. The world is going towards a supposedly-democratic outlook, but with totalitarian roots. Such a software system makes sense for our modern policed nations. And if Google wouldn’t be the one bringing that technology to us, someone else would. I am glad that it’s Google for now. But in 30-40 years down the road, when Larry and Sergey would be long gone from the company, I don’t know how things would be.