Chrome OS Designed To Start Microsoft Death Spiral

Al writes "Technology Review has a feature article that explores the business strategy underlying Google's decision to develop its Linux-based operating system, Chrome OS. Writer G. Pascal Zachary argues that Eric Schmidt has identified a sea-change in the software business, as signaled by Microsoft's recent problems and by the advancement of cloud computing. Zachary notes that Larry Page and Sergey Brin have pushed to develop a slick, open-source alternative to Windows for around six years (with the rationale that improving access to the Web would ultimately benefit Google), but that Schmidt has always refused. While developing Chrome OS is a significant gamble for Google, Zachary believe it will exploit Microsoft's historical weakness in terms of networking and internet functionality, forcing its rival to better serve Google's core business goals, whilst initiating its own steady, slow-motion decline."

Comments

Hogwash

[Devout_IPUite]

Microsoft like SEGA will survive after it's core product ends. Microsoft makes a lot of tools, these will still be used and profitable once Windows is gone (the thought of now more windows makes me giddy though)

Re:Hogwash

[recoiledsnake]

Microsoft has nearly missed the boat before. During Chicago's development, Microsoft all but dropped the ball on that whole Internet thing, at the last moment pasting in Windows for Workgroup's networking engine to support TCP/IP. The initial version of IE sucked, but, in the end, they beat the snot out of Netscape. They even retroactively threw in the Shiva PPP dialer and their own Winsock stack for Windows 3.1, thus pretty much killing Trumpet Winsock.

I won't believe Microsoft's going down the tubes until I actually see Microsoft down the tubes. They're the Energizer Bunny of the computer world, even if they have to steal or assassinate their competition to keep going.

Missing the boat didn't hurt them that much. Why? Because third parties(like Trumpet that you mentioned) filled in the gap for the most popular OS. I don't see a reason that will change much now. Why? Because even Google said this during their announcement. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

So Windows and Macs will run all the Win32 and Mac programs like Office and Photoshop and also run the same web apps that Chrome will run. That means Google Chrome won't have a Killer App, except for the UI, security and cost? So Chrome has to be THAT GOOD in order to make people switch from Windows since stuff like Gmail already runs well in browsers.

And there are lots applications that make no sense to be run in a browser with Back, Forward, Refresh buttons. And not to mention the performance overhead. For example, I like my IDE to be native, thanks. It's slow enough as it is. Will people be willing to give up their native apps just to make the interface better or faster(lets assume Google can do that)? Will Chrome OS innovate that much in UI and security that it will make people switch? I doubt it. Chrome browser already has improvements in speed and UI but that hasn't motivated people to switch.

Fake Steve's interesting take on Chrome OS here --> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/lets-all-take-deep-breath-and-get-some.html

Re:Hogwash

[MightyMartian]

Um, running your apps on timeshared mainframes is hardly "new". I have a relative who is an accountant, and she was using timeshared accounting apps back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This ain't new tech, people, it's just a new (and horribly bastardized and slow) variant of what dumb terminals and X have been capable of for decades. In a way, the "cloud" is much worse, because it's piggybacking asynchronous protocols on top of http, rather than making or utilizing or building much more efficient asynchronous protocols directly connecting the client to the server.

Re:Hogwash

[billcopc]

You're right, it's a full-featured PC being used as a dumb terminal using HTML and XML over TCP instead of ASCII over serial. The whole web app fad caught on largely because people are too dumb to care. The things people think of as web "apps", are really just bastardizations of offline apps that don't benefit at all from being web-based. Photoshop in flash ? Who gives a shit!? The idea behind a network, any network, is to enable collaboration. If all you're doing is going to a single-service web site to do something completely isolated, you are not using a "web app", you're using a shitty app with only a web UI. There's a huge difference! Facebook is an example of a web app. Basecamp is another. Even Bugmenot and Ratemyrack are proper web apps. You could recreate those as binary, installed apps on your PC, but they would still depend on a network and it would make them less open. A web-based image resizer, on the other hand, is a stripped-down half-assed tool whose Javascript footprint is larger than the 30k binary it's trying to imitate, and it adds nothing to the network. In a sense, it is almost parasitic. This is less about timesharing, and more about buzzword hysteria. This retarded mentality that everything should be on the web, for no reason other than everyone else is doing it.

Re:Hogwash

[DrVomact]

Um, running your apps on timeshared mainframes is hardly "new".

The fact that it's not new doesn't mean that it's not going to happen. It wouldn't be the first time that technology moved in cycles. Also, it's only the concept of big iron and thin servers that's old; the implementation today will be much faster because networks are much faster. So fast that inefficient protocols don't matter.

I used to work on a Unix "mainframe" (a Convex, actually), using a diskless Sun workstation. It was a great collaborative environment, and it was sure a lot less hassle for the IT folks to maintain than a zillion PCs all running Windows. Yeah, it was slow...that was the big drawback. If there was more than one user on the network, they all complained that it was too slow. (One user would complain too, but nobody would hear him.) But there were compensations—like starting "Crabs" on somebody else's Xdisplay. *Evil laughter*

But slowness isn't what killed the diskless Suns...it was the managers. They wanted to run Excel and do "roll-ups" (whatever the farking hell those are), so they got PCs. But then they noticed that they were cut off from our network. That could not be allowed. So we all had to get PCs. And here we are. Personally, I wouldn't mind going back to the dumb terminals at work, with fast networks.

Re:Hogwash

[bonch]

What cracks me up is that the tech press--perhaps the most uninformed and overhyped group of hacks I can think of besides the gaming press--uses the phrase "cloud computing" in place of "Internet." Internet is a word that already describes an interconnected network of computers, but we needed a stupid new buzzword to make money off of now that "Web 2.0" and "blog" have grown stale.

Do you use web mail? Now you're "sending mail through the cloud." Do you upload pictures to a website like Flickr? Nope, you're "uploading pictures to the cloud." Cloud implies some kind of distributed, redundant storage using multiple locations, but you're really just using one company's server in the same client-server paradigm that we've been using since Hotmail in the mid-90s. Was I "cloud computing" back then? Give me a fucking break.

It really bothers me that I can't find any vocal resistance in the press to these buzzwords. Is there anyone with a brain?

Re:Hogwash

[Abcd1234]

The idea behind a network, any network, is to enable collaboration.

That's just ridiculous. Or have you never heard of a mainframe?

The idea behind a network, any network, is to ship information from point A to point B. That could be data from person A to person B over some sort of collaborative software suite. OR, it could be an application from server A to thin client B, so that B doesn't have to have all those apps installed locally, thus resulting in lower deployment and upgrade costs, cheaper hardware, and so forth.

In short: the Internet does not, in fact, conform to your limited personal view of it. Get over it.

Good luck with that

[plover]

Not that I'm a Apple advocate, but Apple has had a far superior OS to Windows for the last 8 years, and they've barely dented the PC market. If OS X can't change the Windows mindset, Chrome sure as hell can't.

Chrome is just a shiny object in Sergei's eye. It won't have an impact outside the geek arena.

Re:Good luck with that

[sandbenders]

OS X isn't Apple's downfall, its the fact their computers are so annoyingly expensive that most people won't buy them.

Ugh. The expensive computers aren't their downfall, they are their business model. Say it with me, folks: "Apple is a HARDWARE company." OS X is a value-add, maybe the biggest one in history, to sell more hardware. They don't make cheaper hardware because enough people will buy their expensive hardware to keep them profitable. Apple doesn't make discount computers for the same reason you can't buy a Cadillac subcompact: they are a premium hardware company. Making cheap computers will cut into their profit (why make $50/computer when you can make $300/computer?) and turn out crappier 'value' Macs, further diluting the brand. For the same reason, they don't offer OS X for other platforms. It's designed to sell their hardware. Selling it for PC eats into their hardware sales while upping the numbers of people who install OS X inexpertly or on wacky hardware and then decide it's unreliable.

Rate this -1 or +1, but make sure it says 'Obvious'.

Re:Good luck with that

[whisper_jeff]

...but I don't have $600 I can just spend on a desktop that will quickly go obsolete...

Ok, therein lies the biggest misconception of a Mac. It doesn't "quickly go obsolete." I'm using a Mac Pro that is ... six years old and it's still working damn well. Not "adequately" - it's working incredibly well. Photoshop, Warcraft, Final Cut, Soundtrack Pro, and more. I would love to upgrade to a newer computer (namely something with an Intel chip) but I just can't justify upgrading because what I have now is more than sufficient. Upgrading now would be buying a new toy just because - there's no real justification for getting a new computer because I don't _need_ to upgrade. Short of a catastrophic failure of hardware, I see it remaining more than adequate for several more years. I will not be the least bit surprised if I'm still using it a full decade after it was bought and still using it at a high level. Now, call me crazy, but in the realm of computers, getting a decade worth of use out of a computer is FAR from it quickly going obsolete... I challenge you to get the same sort of life out of a PC, to be blunt (and I say that having a newer-but-dead PC sitting beside my Mac, it's power supply having given up, rendering the newer PC nothing more than a large and expensive paper weight...).

oh FFS slashdot

[kuzb]

Have you not learned yet? You've been screaming doom and destruction at MS for years now and it still hasn't even made so much of a dent. I'm glad that Google is entering the OS market - having another competitor, and one with a history of excellence that google has is a good thing. However, this is not going to start the death spiral of any thing, just like the chrome browser isn't killing any of the major players off.

These sensationalist headlines do not belong here.

Re:Entirely Net-Based?

[steve_thatguy]

Apples and oranges. E-mail is an application that only makes sense if there's a network connection. Editing my home movies, not so much.

Re:My Bet

[Tubal-Cain]

I will gladly bet that Microsoft will still be a highly profitable company in twenty years. The fallacy of this write as with many other prognosticators is that the game is zero-sum.

Much like what happened to IBM.

Not the cost of the computer

[FranTaylor]

Do you really expect anyone to believe that the cost of the computer is the cost of your computing?

Intelligent people who also factor in other costs often end up choosing Macs as the TOTAL low-cost alternative.

I bought a Mac for my wife, it is by far the cheapest solution because I spend zero time fixing it for her.

You are missing the point.

[mario_grgic]

The point of Chrome is not for people to switch to Chrome. Nor is it to write killer apps unique for Chrome. The point of Chrome is to make Microsoft start writing web apps, and moving away from desktop. It's like luring the shark out of water to compete in your territory on the land. Google lives on the Internet, and Chrome OS is the Internet OS, that will hopefully move Microsoft to the Internet even more than they have (Office online, Windows Live etc). And more of Microsoft services online, the better it is for Google. Since Google are the king of Internet and in effect are making Microsoft compete with them outside of their core competence (desktop). And having to compete with Google online, takes away resources from desktop.