8. Get Tech Support?

When Gmail was still in beta (for the last six years, up until, fortuitously, the Chrome announcement), Google didn’t have much of a responsibility to the user. It’s a free service, and a beta one at that. If you don’t like it, go somewhere else. If ever there was a Gmail outage (and I’ve experienced many), there wasn’t much you could do except wait around, read hundreds of tweets from users griping about the outage, and trust that Google was fixing the problem. Once I did actually send an email to Google during an outage, but I never heard back. I didn’t expect to.
Chrome OS is different, though. You think you feel stranded now when your email goes down? Imagine your entire computer, and all of your files and contacts are suddenly completely inaccessible. A “We’re Working On It” message is no longer going to suffice. Alongside Chrome, Google had better also launch 24/7 phone and email support.

9. Maintain Strict Control Over Your Privacy

I’ve written about Google and privacy in the past [http://www.popsci.com/grouse/article/2008-10/can-i-have-my-ssn-back], so I’m not going to go into too much detail here. But, with Chrome, the amount of personal info Google has access to is absolutely unprecedented. If you already use both Gmail and Google search, the company knows who you are, who you know and what kinds of sites you visit. If you use Google Maps, Calendar or Docs, the company knows where you are, where you’re going, what you’re doing and what you’re working on. By using Chrome, you’re tying all of this information into every single little thing you can imagine using a computer for. And these days, that’s just about everything. Scary.

10. Ditch Your Current Desktop OS Entirely

A lot of folks took the announcement of Chrome as a direct swipe at Microsoft. Some couldn’t help but label the new OS a Windows killer. But, let’s calm down. First of all, I don’t think Chrome intends to replace Windows--at least not in the short term. I think it intends to snap up a rather small group of adventurous users who realize they don’t need a hulking desktop OS for the majority of their day-to-day computing tasks.
Secondly, Windows 7 has been specifically built to be lightweight with the next generation of netbooks in mind, and by the time Chrome surfaces, Windows 7 will have already been on the market for 9-12 months. Third, let us not forget the droves of people who returned Linux-based netbooks last year after taking them home and realizing they missed Windows. Never underestimate people’s fear of the unknown.

So, what’s Chrome?

So, what’s Chrome? It’s something different, and to use it will require getting used to doing things very differently than you do now. If there’s one thing to take away from the announcement, it’s something Bob Sutor, IBM’s VP of Linux and Open Source said to me in a conversation earlier this week. “It brings into sharper focus the fact that much of the work people do today is on the web. But on the same token, it brings into sharp focus the fact that a lot of work people do is not on the Web.”