GOOGLE’S CHROMEBOOK laptops will allow business to significantly reduce the cost of ownership of their computer hardware according to Sundar Pichai, senior vice-president for Google’s Chrome.
Speaking in a conference call to European journalists following the product’s launch, Mr Pichai said the company’s rental model would cut out most of the costs involved in managing a computer during its lifetime.
“The total cost of ownership is going to be significantly less than anything else on the market because, as any company knows, hardware is only a small portion of the total cost at enterprise level,” he said.
“Gartner estimates that companies spend upwards of $3,000 per year per employee in this area and we aim to be well below that.”
As the system is effectively a web browser, most of the activity – including using applications and file storage – is done online. However, Mr Pichai said he did not see this reliance on an internet connection being a turn-off for business users.
“We fully recognise the concerns people may have about not being connected all the time but, in reality, people are connected most of the time, especially because of the penetration of smartphones into the market,” he said. “For the benefits you get, including the speed and the fact that the files are available in the cloud no matter what happens, it’s worth it for those odd few minutes where you have no connection.”
However, Mr Pichai said Google was working on new versions of its web-based apps, including productivity suite Google Docs, which would allow them to be used even if a connection is lost. These updates were likely to be released in the summer, he said, while products with similar features already existed on the platform’s app store.
When asked what users could do with the device if they never had any connection at all, he said this was “like asking how you are going to use your phone if you don’t charge it”.
Another sign of how keen Google is to attract business users to the Chromebook is its work with virtualisation company Citrix. A version of the Citrix Reciever has been developed for the platform, which will make it easier for users to access full applications through their device, even if it is processor-intensive.
Chromebooks will initially go on sale in the US as well as in six European countries, including the UK and Germany, from next month.
Customers will be able to buy a laptop from $350 while businesses and students will be able to rent one from $28 and $20 per month respectively on a three-year contract. The rental price includes support for the software, while anti-virus and firmware upgrades will be automatically managed centrally by Google.
There are no plans for an Irish launch, with Caesar Sengupta, product management director at Google, saying each rollout required partnerships with hardware manufacturers and local networks.
