The latest announcements by Google about their netbook OS, Chrome, are drawing the ire of some security experts saying; saying, more or less, that they are just too good to be true.
Google is claiming that “Chromebooks have many layers of security built in so there is no anti-virus software to buy and maintain. Even more importantly, you won’t spend hours fighting your computer to set it up and keep it up to date.” It simply doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to think of another company that has made similar claims. Those claims have finally come out from Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac forum threads and under real world scrutiny. And that same Rocket Surgeon would see that it wouldn’t take much for Google’s promise of “no security needed” to go up in flames.
So what are these features that Google is touting?
•”Sandboxing”. Which, in a layman description, prohibits apps and processes from interfering with one another.
•Automatic updating. Which is great on paper until one of the updates sneaks in a security hole that wasn’t detected by the Chrome team before release.
•Reversion. The saving grace feature that allows the system to rollback to a safe state when an issue has been detected. See automatic updating.
While Google is making great steps and seems to have a decent plan when it comes to protecting their netbooks, perhaps they should tread a little more lightly when it comes to making claims that seem more like old west snake oil than honest to goodness fact.
[via Crunch Gear]
