I also have something to say about the Google Chrome OS
by shai on יולי.09, 2009, under Computers & Technology, English, General
I think what Google is doing with it's OS is the same thing it has done with Chome.
With Chrome, it created a browser with x30 Javascript performance and better standard compliance. Within a year, both FF 3.5 and IE 8 showed up with huge Javascript improvements and better compliance.
With the Chrome OS, the goal is to change the game in the following sense:
- Change the default for software design (OS + apps) of the computer from disconnected to connected.
- Show how good at browsing a dedicated design can be.
Don't forget – Google will not make money directly from this (all code is either GPL (OS) or BSD (browser)). Just as with Android and Chrome – Google's only real interest is driving more usage of the web and of their web applications.
They are taking the next big step – designing a complete software stack under the assumption that most of the time the computer is connected to the internet, and also assuming that the data and application are in the cloud, delivered via a browser.
There is a good chance that the Chrome OS is a little ahead of its time – connectivity is not where we would like it to be, and the cloud apps are still not up to par with native apps (and most don't provide decent offline modes).
Overall – this is a great technological step forward and is not designed as a commercial step. Would it succeed? Almost definitely, since it will push the web/cloud-based, almost-always-connected OS concept forward. Even if the most common implementation is Microsoft's, Google will get its way.
4 Comments for this entry
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יולי 9th, 2009 on 22:01
Come to think of it, this is at least the 3rd time Google played to loose, and by design still won.
The first was their participation in the US spectrum public bid. They lost the spectrum, but managed to push the price above the price-point in which the public-access requirement would be in effect.
The second is Chrome. They have a low market-share, but they still won, since they pushed the whole marketplace to a place where Google can run their complex Javascript-based apps (Wave is reportedly a million JS lines).
The third is Chrome OS. Get a small market-share, but push the whole market into a almost-always-connected cloud-based-apps design.
I'm pretty sure there are additional examples where they played this game – it seems to be a repeating and very successful pattern.
יולי 10th, 2009 on 07:08
אני מניח, שגוגל בסוף תמיד מנצחת. לפחות ככה זה נראה כרגע. העולם מחכה ומשתאה לכל דבר שהם מוציאים. גם אם "העולם" לא משתמש דרך קבע במוצרים של גוגל, אין ספק שזה יוצר סטנדרטים חדשים בשוק. אני לא מתיימר להכיר את כל הדברים שגוגל מוציאים, אבל עצם העובדה שהם גוררים אחריהם חברות ענק, לביצוע דברים שהם לא התכוונו לבצע מלכתחילה – זו אומר דרשני.
זה נותן משמעות חדשה למושג:
Taking over the world
יולי 10th, 2009 on 08:28
Google are playing the game at a higher level than everybody else.
They pretend to go for the spectrum – everybody chases and goes past the public-access price-point, which is what they wanted in the first place.
They pretend to go after the browser market, creating little more than a proof-of-concept browser but with better Javascript performance and a new architecture that has a process per-window and per-plugin and is therefore more secure, speedier and more stable, and everybody is running to play catch-up. They have maybe 5% of the market, but they changed the game.
Now they are pretending to make a competitive OS. And they will change our perception of what a web-centric OS should look like. They may end up with only 5% market-share again, but they still win because what they're after is changing the market in terms of web-centrality, not winning the OS market.
Google may be taking over the world. But they are doing so because they do strategy better than anyone I have seen in a long while.
The _only_ sector where they are really vulnerable, because this is where 99% of their income comes from is advertising, and that is driven by search. What Bing has shown us is that Google has been too conservative for too long when it comes to search GUI and search output. But Microsoft has just lit a fire under their butts, so it's my guess we'll see significant changes within 6 months.
יולי 11th, 2009 on 23:37
See also Walid Abu-Hadba, Microsoft’s Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/07/10/microsoft-vp-says-google-chrome-os-is-a-decoy/