[Macworld]

Post your comments for Google OS may force Microsoft to reinvent Windows here

[spim]

I like these two sentences being in the same article ... by the same author ....

Quote

"A Google OS is ?something Microsoft has been worried about for a long time,?
said Matt Rosoff, analyst with Directions on Microsoft. He called it ?the first
significant threat to Windows in a very long time,?

and

"... although its position in the smartphone market has been undermined by the iPhone
and it is unclear how Microsoft can respond, Rosoff said. ?Apple is dominating the market?
Microsoft is not even considered a competitor,?

I find it amusing.

[jamus]

“The next versions of Windows need to be much more Internet-centric.”
And that is the problem for Microsoft. They do not want it to just be Internet-centric. They want it to be solely Microsoft/WIndows Live/Bing/whatever-they-are-calling-it-this-week centric. Now Google by releasing an OS, can fall into that same protection catch.
The more either of them pushes lock-in, the more I will be staying away.

[flowney]

I would think that Apple is the more immediate threat with a spectrum of OSs ranging from MacOS X to iPhoneOS. It should be easy for Apple to insert other iterations of their OS between these two extremes.
I wouldn't make too much of the fact that Apple ties their OS to the hardware that they sell. With this linkage, Apple already has a proven way to develop revenue streams out of this shift in consumer behavior. Indeed, Google and Microsoft contending for indirect revenues (advertising, analytics, etc.) might even cancel one another out.

[hmurchison]

LOL you gotta love this! These people don't even know what Chrome OS does ..the value prop or unique features. They're just tossing out industry buzzwords "net centric" "cloud computing" and one guy is talking about a decade in the future (as if ANYONE knows what 2019 will offer)

I swear reading Tech internet "Rags" is like a vaudville show nowadays. Each bufoon attempts to out "buzzword" the next.

Linux is free yet I've heard the whole "Chrome OS may make Microsoft lower their prices"

All major OS have web connectivity so how exactly is Chrome OS going to corral open standards and utilize them better than a typical OS?

All i'm reading is confused minds chattering as if they have a clue but i'm not seeing relevant questions and answers.

[BradPDX]

Microsoft has for so long used a "copy then exclude" model for its monopoly that truly competing will mean chewing off its own (Office and Windows) leg to get out from its own trap. While they possess the technical resources to compete, my hunch it that they won't because it just isn't in the company DNA to innovate.
I'm sticking to my prediction of 2006: we will never see another compelling idea come out of MS ever again. That part of the story is long over.

[alansky]

I love these jokers who wax poetic about Google's threat to Microsoft with nary a mention of Apple or OS X. It takes a long time to turn a big ship around, but Apple has been intent on doing just that for quite some time. The notion that Google will just waltz in and take significant market share from Microsoft is naiive at best.

[veggiedude]

The Google OS is for those who want to browse the web all the time. If you want to do PhotoShop or video editing, then Mac or Windows will continue to be your OS.

[mdawson]

Indeed.

[kresh]

I just don't buy it. The enterprise world can't make the thin client concept work and they have ultra fast WAN's for the devices to live on.
Somehow we are to believe that Microsoft is doomed by this thin client operating system with many users on dial-up and most users at less than 10Mbs connections.

[IVIIVIi4ck3y27]

Analysts are often misguided Chicken Little types or bigger hype machines than some companies' marketing departments who read into things too much or don't see the bigger picture. In this case, I think it's safe to say that they're reading into them too much with Chrome OS. There's definitely a strong sense of innovation coming out of Google, the I/O conference has sort of become the uber geek's equivalent to MacWorld Expo, with more of a hint of WWDC rolled in. That said, the desktop is the desktop and like it or not... Windows-compatibility still reigns supreme with only OS X being a close second. As Linux improves it's becoming more of a player but it's still quite a ways away from beating or competing with it's competition. It is IMHO a big part of the "choices" that the Linux platform has that makes it lag somewhat behind. KDE vs. Gnome being the big one that sticks out, much less the various distros and how they're assembled/bundled and configured.
It's not like Android has crushed Apple in the phone market yet (although it's definitely a formidable player with RIM and MS and at this stage, even in "half-baked" status they do have a serious ton of potential). The problem I see with Android as it is today is that now with the standard Android GUI and now HTC's GUI, the consistency of the environment is going to fragment. This is a big part of why Linux can't take over the desktop as well... because Gnome and KDE provide 2 answers and neither one has the overall polish that OS X and dare I say it, Windows, has. Granted, Google can likely put their resources and $ behind making that happen better than KDE and Gnome could, but same token... HTC's UI right now is already regarded by some (Engadget at least seems to think so) as being better than the default Android UI.
To me... Android is like an alternative to mobile Linux. It's another supposedly free and open source platform where the GUI's can be divergent and also, potentially lack polish.
I will say that Gnome is getting better (just installed Ubuntu on my cousin's laptop, XP was too slow esp. with antivirus running) but it's still a generation behind OS X (much less the later builds of OS X). True, you can make it better... but the average mom or pop isn't going to know how to do that. Turnkey with polish = the only answer and it's not something any distro is hawking at the moment.
I'm not sure that the end-user with a Netbook will want Chrome OS. It's not like mobile Linux has stolen the people's hearts in Netbook land. XP drastically outsells Linux on preinstall and yet, the Linux laptops are often cheaper. There's a higher rate of returns on the Linux laptops as users return them for exchange of a Windows netbook.
Then again, while Netbook's are pretty solidly here their sales have sort of plateaued and they're far from the top of the heap. Google almost seems to be looking to carve out a niche, a niche that even Ubuntu's Remix iteration is pretty much catering to at the moment and not exactly storming the marketshare ladder. True, Google has more clout and capability than Canonical but honestly... Canonical is a pretty solid company IMHO and Ubuntu = a pretty solid product (building traction with each release) whereas Google, right or wrong, has faced some criticisms over it's data harvesting standards and privacy that leave some more leary than excited.
Rather than create a Net-based OS design, Google would do better to attack the desktop in full force or just stick with a focus on making Android ridiculously good, it's pretty awesome at a very green 1.0 already. Otherwise, they should either jump in and help the Linux platform in general (whether it's creating a new desktop environment [x11-based or not, I would say not = a better choice as we have 2 x11-based frontrunners already] or helping an existing one with additional coding and improvements), or create it's own complete desktop and laptop OS (i.e. like Intel's OS they put together recently). With some of the partners ChromeOS has on-board... getting Chrome available to Linux distros (and the Mac) quickly, getting a better implementation of Flash on mobile Android devices as well as on Linux, all of these things will help Google's web-app minded plans with Flash and HTML 5 and AJAX front and center. A machine where the browser is the machine just doesn't sound entirely appealing for the same reasons many balked at Apple's original HTML 5/AJAX push on the iPhone and no announcement or seeming plans of an SDK.

[mjtomlin]

I think the most significant point is that Microsoft's business strategy up to this point has been to tie ALL of its technologies to Windows. This includes services, applications and content and so far they've been able to get away with it. If much of this can be moved towards internet-based open standards, then Microsoft will be forced to shift directions and break that Windows tie. This could potentially lead to their downfall. This is why they've resisted to moving towards standards; if it no longer matters what OS you're running to use basic enterprise applications, then they're seriously screwed.
The only thing I can't understand is ... All of this is exactly what Sun was attempting to do a decade ago when they bought up Netscape. Except of course, they wanted people to move towards using Java, which meant moving from one proprietary technology to another that wasn't equally supported on the major platforms. We all know how well that went. The only difference today is that there is a truly open, standards-based run-time that can be used across all platforms and architectures; Webkit.

[mjtomlin]

IVIIVIi4ck3y27 said:

many balked at Apple's original HTML 5/AJAX push on the iPhone and no announcement or seeming plans of an SDK.

This is not true and I don't know why this is repeated over and over again. When the iPhone was released Steve Jobs said that if people wanted to write apps for the iPhone, the only way was to write webapps. He also said that they would like to offer a native SDK, but "we just haven't figured out how to do it yet." That statement told us that it would eventually come, but everyone insists that they had no plans at that point to ever release a native SDK.