In a recent announcement from Google, they told us how their operating system will be an open-sourced Linux-modified kernel with a heavy emphasis on the web. The system will only allow you to surf the web and to do it as fast as it possibly can. They even have created hardware specifications to provide a great user experience (this is corporate-speak for "to be really really fast"). As a user, all this is something to look forward to.
Having a computer (or phone or other mobile device) that can boot up and get you working on web-based applications in 7 seconds or less sounds pretty damn good but there's another side to it. We've been saying for a long time how our current Windows monoculture is a boon for the bad guys because it allows them to have a minimal development with lots of potential victims. Since the main infection vector nowadays is the web, can future threats attack this new ChromeOS through the big windows that is the browser? It certainly looks like a possibility.
In the same way that criminals today are attacking MacOS, it's not far-fetched to predict that in a year and a half, they could be creating nasty things for ChromeOS. Will this change the threat landscape radically? Probably not. But I think it will change the way we see the internet.
If most of us already use the computer mainly to work with the web, Chrome will only reaffirm us in the belief that a browser is all we need. My main worry is that, in such a scenario, offline content will be a thing of the past so we'll tend to keep more of our digital resources online. That means more things for the bad guys to target. Information-stealing will be king in the underground world. It's quite bad now but it can only get worse from there on.
I'm looking forward to check Chrome OS out anyway.
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