Chrome OS, the lightweight operating system centered around Google’s Chrome browser has made serious inroads thanks to the affordable hardware it runs on which has seen it become popular with users particularly students. That obviously must have been unsettling to one company that has traditionally dominated the desktop computing operating system scene: Microsoft. And it is reportedly responding in typical fashion with its own Chrome OS alternative.
References to Windows 10 Cloud have been uncovered in recent Windows 10 test builds.
According to ZDNET‘s in-house Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley, Windows 10 Cloud “is a simplifed version of Windows 10 that will be able to run only Unified Windows Platform (UWP) apps installed from the Windows Store”.
This will not be the first time that Microsoft will be introducing a less resource intensive and cheaper version of its Windows operating system targeted mainly at the budget market which has so far fallen in love with Chromebooks, the machines that run on Chrome OS. Microsoft’s previous efforts include the infamous Windows RT which ran on the Surface RT and Surface 2 devices and was mainly looked down upon because it could only allow apps specifically made for it to run instead of just about any other Windows app/program.