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No Secret Plan at Google?
daltonlp writes "A number of smart folks have speculated that Google might leverage its computational resources to create some kind of massive online application delivery platform. Here's why they are probably wrong." One of more intelligent insights into Google, and it's pleasantly devoid of theories of Google taking over the world.
They didn't hire Rob and Marc to work on giving you online spreadsheets.
If they did this or an OS, which they wont as the article says wouldn't it cost them and the used massave amounts of bandwidth?
Failures (and business declines) often happen in big chunks: Lawsuit settlement of tens of millions of dollars. Major market shift away from your technology.
This is just smart business. Google will continue to move and enhance and grow in manageable increments. If they try to take over the world, it will be suicidal.
Anyone remember the dot-bomb era? The survivors are those that performed managed growth and bit off pieces that could be chewed. The failures tried to take over the world, and translate eyeballs into unrealistic company valuations. Works for a while, then you get an unemployment check....
They are taking over the world. They plan on taking over the world by not taking over the world. "Hey, Google is nice....they aren't taking over the world" Then before you know it you page ranking what to eat, who your friends are, what car to buy, where to live, where to work.
Then whammo you can't live without Google telling you what to do in nice little browser friendly bites.
Wait nevermind...I already do that.
Lets welcome our Page Ranking pverlords.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Google Groups = complete usenet archive
This was acquired, not created by Google. And arguably, the old Deja capabilities were better (wild card searching) than what Google currently offers (mainly cosmetic changes and no wildcards). Personally that is what brought me over to Google, not the search engine itself. I was quite happy using Yahoo for targeted categorized searches and metacrawler for more extensive stuff. Google just had that cult of personality thing going and they've been riding the wave ever since. After all, just what makes gmail all that great anyway? I think the ad's are an abomination and I use hushmail.
But...
Google Groups 2 = complete usenet archive, now horrifically crippled by terrible interface
Google Desktop Search = the worst of all the desktop search apps
Picasa 2 = The upgrade that feels like a downgrade
Google Image Search = nigh on useless search engine that often points to images that don't really exist on the web page, or the web page itself even exists.
Its not all good, y'know.
The article highlights that Google developers are allowed to spend 20% of their time on what daltonlp calls "lab projects, personal projects, forever-in-beta projects, whatever".
Google constantly produces revolutionary innovations that noone can foretell. (How many of you thought you would have 1gb of email space for free?)
Conclusion is, I don't quite buy daltonlp's arguments for why it would be impossible that one of these lab projects is to develop browser based os/applications.
Despite that Google isn't out to take over the world their impact on the net is quite amazing.
Google's long standing tech demo that is their search engine has become pretty important. In fact, for the most part, if it doesn't come up on a google search, it doesn't exist.
There have been so many memes spawned from google as well... Google-whacking, google fights, google bombing, etc.
Let's not forget the chaos that ensued when GMail opened up either.
They don't need to take over anything, really, everyone's eating out of the palm of their hand.
designing a viable alternative to the OSes that we have today.
Two words for you: driver support.
OK, I know this is all alleged, so this is all moot, but wasn't the idea behind a Google OS that it would be a hosted OS? In other words we access it remotely, and Google decide on the hardware? Why would a hosted OS need driver support (I'm assuming that Google already have drivers to support the hardware they currently have, etc)?
This is where the serious fun begins.
Gumstix
With platforms like THIS, what you're thinking can't be too far off. A keychain computer. Wouldn't have to be too powerful, it'd just need a small, projectable display and a virtual keyboard.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
agoogle constantly comes out with USEFUL and credible apps
Google Groups = complete usenet archive
I beg to differ. They have not 'come up' with it. They just bought the dejanews data. Also the new interface is worse then the old version they had. Dejanews was much, much easier to use fronm a Usenet point of view. The old google was not great, but it was OK. What they have now is, to me, completele crap. I rather use Outlook Express instead of Google and I say that as a slrn user.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Geez why would they go the route of a costly infrastructure setup when they already have what they need?
I'll tell you what they're doing, they are using knowledge of what everyone around the whole world is searching for to tap into all kinds of consumer trend and demand opportunities. You know all those shoppers club cards that track your purchases, and credit cards which track all your spending habits? That data is awfully valuable. And Google has the best knowledge in the world. All they have to do is perfect the way the data is organized and packaged to marketing buyers.
For a quick glimpse of the possibilities, let's say you play the stock market. Wouldn't it be brilliant to know what potential investors are really interested in this week, what they have been researching online... well Google knows! I'll be they realize this, and are working on a way to capitalize on it.
The first programming company I worked for done something similar, it was understood that pet projects could be used without license for any purpose by the company, they didn't however say that I couldn't also use project.
Because we were working small contracts about 10-20% of our time was filled with pet projects.
I developed an application called 'shite to basic', that performed a number of tasks,
like formating code, spell checking comments, checking tab order on forms, looking for poorly names variables, looking for complex or messy code, and dependency tracking.
The dependency tracking bit was used for some y2k testing, it was easy to track the dependencies of all functions that use dates, or used functions that used dates etc...
hacess also started out at work at a pet project, but ended up being used to recover some lost data in an access database for a client.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
That argument is flawed. Crazy Old Men ranting about electricity is completely different. People rely on their computers, especially in this time=money world.
People weren't commonly using electricity, so they had nothing to lose by trying it (or not trying it for that matter). But as other arguments are saying, that the internet will be as reliable as ever with very little down time, to remove this problem, then it seems like this remote OS could work; Of course this is ignoring the fact that if someone walked by and cut your cable you'd be screwed.
both responses so far missed the point (or maybe got it, but argued against it still). You rely on electricity, right? Without electricity your computer wouldn't run (granted you can have batteries, but that runs out). No one (other than Crazy Old Men) sits around and says "don't rely on a computer because you might have a power failure". We just use our computers, and when the power fails, we wait until it comes back up.
If people come to rely on their internet connections the way they do power, it'll be the same scenario. Like the way we have battery backup and generators, their will be a backup connections for those who really need 24/7 connections. Your fiber connection fails? Use cable/DSL/dial-up/cellular as backup. For example, my cable provider already provides dial-up in addition to cable which I can use if my cable goes down.
#!/