Unveils Revolutionary Free Virtual Computer Announces Investment From Benchmark Capital
RAMALLAH, Palestine and MODI’IN, Israel, May 29 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- The G.ho.st(TM) Virtual Computer was selected yesterday as one of just five new consumer technologies from around the world to launch on-stage at the Wall Street Journal’s prestigious D: All Things Digital conference. G.ho.st (the Global Hosted Operating SysTem at http://G.ho.st, pronounced "ghost") offers its Web-based Virtual Computer (VC) free of charge to every human being.
G.ho.st is proud to be the first joint Palestinian-Israeli technology start-up and one of the only companies developing a major new technology in the Palestinian territories. The unique joint Palestinian-Israeli team comprises over 40 Palestinian and Israeli professionals collaborating across political and physical barriers, primarily using Internet videoconferencing.
The G.ho.st Virtual Computer (VC) advances the trend of Web software (software-as-a-service) to the next generation with an entire personal computing environment (desktop, file system, applications, and settings) hosted in the cloud. Benefits of the G.ho.st Virtual Computer include:
* Access to user’s desktop from any Web browser.
* Admin-free: Secure, up-to-date and backed up with no installation required.
* G.ho.st desktop, file system and many of the applications are free of charge.
* Manages web resources: files, applications and web stuff with one URL, one sign-on and interoperability.
G.ho.st is in public alpha and expects to launch a beta service that will be ready for "prime time" use around Halloween 2008. Users worldwide are encouraged to adopt G.ho.st as their primary computing environment or as a secondary environment to be used away from home.
According to G.ho.st Founder & CEO Zvi Schreiber, "G.ho.st is bursting through cultural, technological and physical barriers. Our team spans the Palestinian-Israeli divide and our Virtual Computer provides a rich personal computing environment that is not tied to any specific location, hardware or budget."
Rami Abdulhadi, G.ho.st’s Director of Marketing Communications, speaking in Ramallah, Palestine, added "G.ho.st is demonstrating that Palestinians and Israelis can work together and that Palestine has the potential to host a thriving high tech industry. Collaboration and economic growth could energize the Palestinian-Israeli peace process".
G.ho.st also announced today that its lead investor is Benchmark Capital which operates in California and Israel, has $2.5billion under management, and is known for such successes as EBay and MySQL. The financing will be used to accelerate research and development in order to ensure a strong beta launch.
"We are very excited about our investment in G.ho.st and look for it to become the organizing principal for all web services in this next generation of the Web. The remarkable team has moved technological mountains to bring G.ho.st to life." said Michael Eisenberg, partner at Benchmark Capital Israel.
Several individual investors, including ex-Mircrosoft executives and veteran industry investors, have participated in investment rounds in a personal capacity. These included Paul Maritz, who managed the development of Windows at Microsoft.
About G.ho.st
G.ho.st (the Global Hosted Operating System, pronounced "ghost") provides a free Web-based Virtual Computer (VC) to every human being. The G.ho.st VC service includes a personal desktop, files and applications, available from any browser. G.ho.st is the world’s first and only true open Web Operating System (Web OS), working seamlessly with leading third-party Web applications. The G.ho.st VC delivers a mature computing environment to every person, which is free of charge, available everywhere and admin-free. The G.ho.st VC service is available at http://G.ho.st. G.ho.st has 40 employees in Palestine and Israel and is funded by Benchmark Capital.
