With the announcement of new Chrome netbooks today, Google also announced a new subscription plan for students for only $20 a month. This package will come with a new Chrome OS netbook, as well as extra storage in the cloud from Google for it’s services.
This will certainly appeal to students, as $20 a month is more than affordable, and we have serious doubts that Google won’t have an insane amount of interested parties. Students going to college now have been using the internet a majority of their lives, and will most likely be able to figure out what they need to do to get what they want out of Chrome OS. Since everything lives in the browser in Chrome OS, it’s easy to hit limitations if you don’t know what to look for.
Google is usually known for giving its services away for free, but charging a small fee for a decent netbook and expanded cloud storage is still a great deal. It’s always been Google’s game to get as many people using its services, and a deal like this may be a nice trick to help it do so. This package deal won’t stop at students, either. Eventually we’ll see similar plans for businesses using Google Apps.
Judging from the announcements today at the Google I/O, the search giant is taking this OS more seriously than ever, and plans to really carve out its own share. Google probably isn’t planning to take over the market with Chrome OS, but with the way the internet is going today, you really do just need is a browser for the most part. However, until Chrome OS can have similar functionality through web apps than Windows or OSX, it’ll be an uphill battle for Google.
Google’s response? “Hey, do you want a super cheap netbook?” Of course you do.
[Via: ExtremeTech]