It hasn’t been the best of months for Chrome with problems on macOS and Windows. But now Google has announced a potentially game changing reason for millions of users to quit Windows for Chrome OS.
In a new blog post titled ‘The future of computing showed up early’, Google Chrome OS vice president John Solomon has revealed that native Windows apps – including Microsoft Office – will soon run on Chromebooks. This will be true local support that will work offline, giving users the opportunity to ditch Windows and move to Google’s super fast, super secure operating system.
How is Google doing this? The company has partnered with Parallels, a virtualization software business. Parallels had already developed a Remote Application Server (RAS) which could virtualize Windows apps and even a full Windows desktop on Chrome OS, but users had to be online at all times to access it and performance could lag. Both these key obstacles will now be removed.
Moreover, they will be removed very soon. While it sounds like a far fetched concept, Google states that Parallels integration with Chrome OS will launch “in the Fall”.
Caveats? There are a few. First, Google is prioritizing support for Chrome OS enterprise users, even though wider support is inevitable, Second, gaming support seems unlikely given a) Chromebooks don’t typically have the power to run most Windows games smoothly, b) Google Stadia already caters for this. Third, Windows apps use a lot of storage which may not suit many existing Chromebooks.
Despite these obstacles, the news has the potential to cause the biggest shake up in computing in years, transforming Chrome OS from a specialist player into the most flexible operating system available (remember: it already runs Android apps). Moreover, what chance Google can add macOS support next?
