Years active 1990–present Name Jeff Nelson Education University of Arizona | Website jeff-nelson.com Role Author | |
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Full Name Jeffrey James Nelson Born August 18, 1971 (age 52) ( 1971-08-18 ) Arizona, U.S. Occupation Software engineer and businessman Books Programming Mobile Objects with Java | ||
Jeff Nelson claims to be the inventor of the Google Chrome OS, but this has been disputed. He is an author of two books on internet technology, Programming Mobile Objects with Java and Java Class Libraries: Special Edition. He was an engineer at eBay and the lead engineer for eBay Search.
Contents
Patents
Google was granted a patent for "Network Based Operating System Across Devices" on August 7, 2012 and a second patent for "Network File Association" on November 26, 2013 listing Jeffrey Nelson as the inventor.
Reviews
Media has criticized the first patent as too broad, covering all cloud operating systems. A contributor to ConceivablyTech notes "Chrome OS has a different target and several different approaches than JavaStation did. The main difference is that it is very broad, and all-encompassing. It covers all previous versions of cloud operating systems as well as all future operating systems that are based on internet-based core distribution." Alfonso Maruccia writing for Neowin expressed his own doubts about the patent, "The patent clearly describes what Mountain View has already marketed as Chrome OS, the tiny client-based operating system that hasn’t really been a big deal thus far as for sales and popularity."
Wolfgang Gruener writes, "The patent is entitled 'Network based operating system across devices,' and was filed in March 2009, about two months before Chrome OS was officially announced. What makes this patent special is the fact that it covers virtually all aspects of 'providing an operating system over a network to a local device' in a manner that would apply to any cloud OS."
Original plan
Despite the webcentric OS approach to the operating system, Nelson writes on his blog: "The main priority of Chromebook—originally—was not to write a webapp-only operating system. In fact, the main priority when I started constructing the operating system was the need for speed – to create a super-fast operating system."