Google rolls out Managed Public Sessions to make Chromebooks public kiosks

Google today announced a new feature for Chromebooks today on the Google Enterprise Blog called “Managed Public Sessions”. The idea is to allow businesses to set up customizable experiences for customers and employees while allowing the Chromebook to act as a public kiosk without requiring logins. Google has been working with a number of partners including Dillards, Multnomah County Library, and Hyatt San Francisco to run public tests of the features:

Administrators can easily customize any Chrome device to be a public session device using the web-based management console. The features that you’ll find in the console include the ability to set the default sites and apps a user sees at login, custom brand the homepage, block sites and apps that shouldn’t be accessed, configure device inputs and outputs, and set timed log-out sessions. For security reasons, public session data is cleared on logout so the next user starts fresh.