jeff-nelson

SSD drives are only as fast as the BUS. SATA BUS tops out at around 100 MB/s. While the RAM BUS tops out at 15,000 MB/s.

150x faster data access is very significant.

Yes, there's a couple performance trade-offs, both good and bad.

First, as you observe, File I/O is faster than Network I/O - on a call for call basis. However, current disk-based operating systems may perform thousands of File I/O operations per second when performing seemingly trivial tasks - dramatically slowing down the perceived speed of the operating system. Webapps do not perform thousands of Network I/O operations per second. Instead, webapp authors go to great lengths to maximize that the perceived performance of the app, even on very slow network connections. For example, Gmail perform asynchronous background network operations, so the user rarely perceives any sort of network delay - even on a very slow connection.

Another significant trade-off of running webapps instead of locally installed application compiled to machine code - webapps are usually written in some combination of Flash, ECMAscript, or HTML5, all of which are much slower than machine code. However, webapp authors also go to great lengths to insure their apps perform very well, despite the slow language interpreters.

In the end if the webapps are written well, they absolutely can run faster than a traditional operating system running local apps.

Its not evasive. I'm stating if you are at Google, you can go look at the actual operating system itself. Also, copies of the slide deck we presented to management - on many occasions - is also almost certain still sitting on the Google file system. Its not like anything ever gets deleted at Google.

I tend to agree that Google doesn't file enough patents.

For such an innovative company, with hundreds of different products in several industries, and many of the best and brightest employees anywhere, their patent portfolio is miserable.

Regarding, "It looks like Jeff took his ideas and sent them into the patent guys who dutifully filed them and voila"

Well, for one, this wasn't just "ideas". I created an operating system and used it myself for over a year, pitched it to management, sent it to a company wide email list, and got head count assigned to the project.

Aside from that, Google has been very contemplative about what patents to file or not file.

Without going into any great detail, I wrote 2 patents on my Google OS operating system - and only the one was ever perfected.

I wrote 3 or 4 other patents on unrelated projects that were all filed as provisional patents and allowed to expired.

At least 1 of the expired provisional patents was very, very commercially valuable, in my opinion, but Google apparently did not recognize that.

Hi guesty, I apologize I didn't remember the subject line of an email I sent 6 years ago.

If you are a member of Google, you can almost certainly track down a copy and run the actual operating system.

I had correspondence with hundreds of Google engineers at that time. Obviously if I had access to my email record, I could provide the contact details of all of those engineers, but that was all turned over to Google when I left the company.

The Star Wars article change was a joke - that was corrected about 5 seconds later. I'm part of the generation of Star Wars fanboys. I apologize if that offended anyone.

Peter Kasting tracked down the original company-wide email. It was actually from May 2007 and titled "Guppy needs testers" - for those of you working for Google who would like to look it up. Since I left Google in January 2008 and had to turn over all of my records, I'm working from memory here.

The entire experience of having work that I did 6 years ago questioned, has been interesting.

However, the invention, the communications, the meetings, and the OS itself are all very well documented both inside and outside Google. Further, I'm fairly confident in the integrity of Google management.

I hope I have responded in an entirely professional manner, and I'd like to assure everyone that I hold no grudges and, particularly for those Googlers who weren't aware of my work, I'd welcome the opportunity to buy you a beer sometime and fill you in on everything that happened in 2007.

Hello all. I am the Jeff Nelson under discussion.

I am not surprised some people are calling this claim into doubt since its was work done back in 2006 and 2007. It sounds like many of these questions are being raised by people outside of Google or individuals who joined the project after 2007.

First, let me reassure you that while I was not able to walk out of Google with my email history or design documents, Google sent me long correspondence about the Chrome OS patent after I left Google. I don't believe this correspondence is covered by any NDA since it was sent to me after I left Google, and I have retained all of that correspondence.

I published the work called "Google OS" on a company wide email list in April 2007, with subject line "Google OS", and received hundreds of positive comments from other engineers at that time. I also held a tech talk on "Google OS" in May 2007. Anyone at the company in April 2007 will likely retain a copy of the original "Google OS" email, search for subject line "Google OS" in April 2007.

The operating system that I invented, as described in the April 2007 email on a company wide email list, was a webapp-centric chopped-down Linux with a Chrome browser front-end. The operating system had almost no applications installed on it, instead all of the functionality came from webapps; performing any operation on the desktop launched a Chrome window to one of many webapps. The original April 2007 version of the operating system that was published on a company wide email list was substantially identical to the publicly released Chromebook product, as was the writeup in the original 2007 email.

Further, back in 2007, I had meetings with Jeff Huber (VP of Google's consumer products group), Larry Page (now CEO), several other directors and managers, and even presented a techtalk - all of these meetings on Chrome OS project. By the end of 2007, I was working with a product manager, and together we were able to convince management to launch the Chrome OS project and assign head count to the project by the end of 2007. In August 2007, my product manager and I even met with an external hardware vendor to have exploratory talks regarding their interest in distribution a Chrome OS laptop.

All of this is verifiable both from the email record, such as the April 2007 "Google OS" email to a company wide mailing list, and also by those who met with me on Chrome OS in 2007, including Larry Page himself. Further, I retain the hard copies of the correspondence with Google that was sent to me after I left the company on the subject as well, which I don't believe is covered by any sort of NDA.

I hope this clears up some of the controversy. Again, I am not surprised that many of you who either worked on Chromebook or joined Google after 2007 have never heard of me. Once I left Google, there would have been no reason to continuously bring up my name as the original inventor, and I have chosen not to come forward until the patent was finalized and published. I apologize to those of you who may have been confused by this.

So to summarize: 1. I wrote the original Chrome OS and published it on a company wide email list in April 2007. 2. I wrote the patent in 2007, which is now accepted and published by the USPTO as of August 2012 and shows my name as inventor. 3. I convinced management to launch and assign head count to the original Chrome OS project by the end of 2007.