Google appears to be planning a netbook usability study, and the company is seeking recruits. CNet found a posting on Craigslist which points to a document netbook users can fill out to join the study. Participants need to be able to get to Google’s Mountain View or San Francisco offices, so if you’re reading this in New Zealand, you probably won’t want to bother signing up. But the study is interesting for a few reasons:
- Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently shrugged off questions about the Google Android operating system on netbooks
- But Schmidt did say that netbooks were ideal for interacting with cloud services like Google Docs, Gmail, and other Google services
In other words, you shouldn’t sign up for this study expecting Google to load Android on your netbook. But it looks like Google is trying to get a better handle on how people use netbooks so that the company can better build its cloud-based services to work well with netbooks.
You know what I’d like to see? Online synchronization of bookmarks, passwords and other data for Google Chrome. Right now Opera lets you synchronize your preferences between a web browser on your desktop computer and netbook, making it easy to keep your work flow the same no matter which device you’re using. And you can achieve something similar with Firefox by installing Mozilla Weave or Xmarks. But there’s no sync option for Google Chrome yet, despite the fact that Google was an early innovator in this space with the now-defunct Google Browser Sync.
I wish they’d pay a plane ticket to their office. 🙂
I won’t bother signing up.
Boy would I like to be part of this. Too bad I am thousands of mile away.