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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."
Chrome OS Designed To Start Microsoft Death Spiral
Hopefully that's not their primary goal. Remember, if your primary goal isn't to do something positive for the customer then it ain't gonna work.
... you've got a long way to go. You also need to consider that everyone is using something right now and you need to convince die hard Linux fans to leave their loyal distro of choice and follow you onward. That's just as important to success as targeting Windows, I would wager. Me, personally, would be impressed if you can get better hardware support and either work around Flash or pinch Adobe into supporting Flash on Linux. Those would be huge and I think would be highly decisive.
... nobody wants another Duke Nukem or Hurd where we're perpetually waiting and cracking jokes about it.
Luckily I know that there's a bit more to Chrome OS than Microsoft death threats. It's a nice thought but
Also, I'm glad they didn't break this news six years ago when they started thinking about it
My work here is dung.
Google: Buy our OS, it'll run on any computer and you can buy the speed you need.
It seems likely that this will be Google's new market once Chrome and the cloud are developed further. Microsoft and Apple will most likely follow suit.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I wonder how different that picture would be if you could install and sell OSX, without any legal ambiguity, on any PC you want.
Yeah, I doubt tools like Visual Studio will go down easy. I do some of my work in Eclipse, but when I'm working with C++ on Win32, I want my VC++. As for Office... sorry MS, I switch to google docs a few weeks ago.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Is ultimately a fad. I do not see any real utility in giving control of my software and security to a third party company. In fact, just the opposite. Given Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo's dubious record for security, I and many other savvy computer users will not be welcoming our Cirrus overlords any time soon. It definitely holds little value to business and industry because they like to retain control over there information and rightly so. The disadvantage of going back to centralized computing is placing all your eggs in one basket: one intruder comprises a system and has gained, quite literally, the keys to the castle. It often shocks me to see how many people use twitter, facebook, and their ilk - just blindly eschewing their own privacy because something looks cool. This follow the crowd mentality, "sheeple," if you will is not a good a thing. It is amazing what information one can glean from these sites and if any become compromised, we open ourselves to identity theft on a scale unimagined.
True, then they started buying any company that had anything related to the Internet. Remember Vermeer Technologies Inc.? They created FrontPage and MS snatched them up to compete with other editors out there like HotDog. There was another company I saw at Internet World at the same time. They had some easy-to-use, drag-and-drop Java applet creator. Was interesting. Two days after their press conference MS grabbed them, too.
Bark less. Wag more.
Where I agree with MyLongNickName is that Microsoft is also a moving target. Google may roust them out of the OS game, and FOSS may scramble their software niche, that doesn't mean that M$ is up the creek sans paddle. MS just has to adjust their direction and change targets, using, as usual, Apple as a model. 10 years ago Apple made hardware and a small handful of fairly minor applications. Apple changed targets and focus and now it Rooolz the roost with iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and has a large stable of other fine apps (FinalCutPro, Logic, Keynote, GarageBand, etc.) Watch MS do the same kind of zig zag. It probably won't be the same as Apple (Apple's already there and has staked out the turf) but MS will find some other equally lucrative direction.
As an iPhone has more RAM, storage, speed, and video capabilities than my first half dozen computers, COMBINED, it is absurd to discuss IT in terms of Only Computers. This is where I think we will see even Google's first stumble.
Example: give an iPhone HDMI out and two 6pin USB ports. Game over. No more need for desktop, laptop, anything. Just your "iPhone" and a charger, a monitor and keyboard at home and at the office. Done.
If google's phone system can do that on (x) brand phones (and can convince someone like RIM or Panasonic to build one with HDMI/USB) then Google beats Apple to the punch and wins almost the entire future computer market.
And MS in all of that? They have enough money they could build their own damn phone w/ HDMI/USB, and sell them with Verizon for $200 and beat Google AND Apple to the punch.
It's not a matter of if - it's a question of when and how.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Well I wouldn't write Chrome off so simply as that. First, for every bit that Apple is cool and stylish, there's also a tremendous backlash against it. There are people who absolutely hate Apple for its trendiness alone.
Second, OSX is good, and you can even argue that it's "the best desktop OS available", but that doesn't mean that it's "the best desktop OS for meeting every single person's needs". It's not perfect, and in fact often aims for the lowest common denominator. I don't mean that to be insulting (I use OSX), but if there's a feature that Apple thinks will make things more complicated and won't be used by 90% of users, they'll drop that feature. That may even be the right choice when you get down to it, but it means that they're not addressing the needs of that 10%.
Third, Apple doesn't have an extremely varied hardware line, and OSX is (theoretically/legally) bound to Apple's hardware. That means that even if OSX meets your needs, if Apple's hardware doesn't also meet your needs, then you can't use it.
And fourth, Apple *has* made a dent in the PC market. How much depends on who you ask and how you measure it. Is it market share? OSX sales? Dollars spent on Apple/OSX products vs. Windows products? You'd probably need a lot of data and experts to hash it all out, and those are things I don't have. But you know who does have them? Microsoft. And why do you think they've focused most of their recent advertising in attaching good feelings to the phrase "I'm a PC," while claiming that Macs are too expensive? If Apple weren't a genuine threat, they wouldn't bother.
Of course, none of this is to say that Chrome is going to kill Windows.
Ok, I'll bite. Why would Chrome ever be "required to support IE"?
I assume Microsoft would be capable of writing IE for Chrome if they felt like doing so.
If OS X can't change the Windows mindset, Chrome sure as hell can't.
The difference between OS X and ChromeOS is that OS X is Apple's crown jewel. It is how they differentiate their computers and make money.If they were to seperate it from their hardware they'd be directly competing against windows and MS could use their Windows monopoly to crush Apple unless Apple wrote it off as a loss and used their other revenue streams to support it. In short, Apple would have to put 50%+ of their profit on the line for very little return at high risk. It's not good business.
ChromeOS, on the other hand, is a value added to Google's crown jewels, their advertising and search business. Google is not risking any primary investment and can afford to develop the OS at a loss. Further, they can go past Apple's use of open source and gain more free code and work from the community than is practical for Apple.
Apple's only practical business model is to chip away at the Windows monopoly and hope others do the same until it is no longer powerful enough to be used to crush them. Google can go whole hog right away and directly compete with Windows by giving Chrome OS away and supporting it without any fear of their profits being destroyed. It's a different game.
I know when I'm looking for insight into the software industry and the relative merits of different Web browsers, court decisions handed down by narcoleptic 70-year-old judges who still have their secretaries print all their emails are the first place I look.
Two things:
Yes, housing prices have corrected themselves. The fact that 50% of mortgages are upside down is irrelevant. Those mortgages were taken out then housing prices were seriously inflated, so when the price of the house goes down to a sane level, I'd expect the mortgages to be upside down.
When Bush threw money at the Fed, the Dems bitched. When Obama threw money at the Fed, the Repubs bitched. No one really cares about the country anymore. It's all about getting your guy on top and the other guy knocked down.
Screw that.
Actually a third: "Grow the economy" does not mean "buy more shit". Buying more shit is what put us in this mess. I fail to see how doing more of the same will get us out of it. We need to be focusing on paying down our debts and being fiscally responsible with the money that is coming in.
My twitter
This is what one of Microsoft's Open Source competitors had to say about SharePoint:
Microsoft has found a way to create ties between SharePoint and its more traditional products like Office and Exchange. Companies can tweak Office documents through SharePoint and receive information like whether a worker is online or not through tools in Exchange. These links have Microsoft carrying along its old-line software as it builds a more Internet-focused software line.
"SharePoint is saving Microsoft's Office business even as it paves the way for a new era of Microsoft lock-in," said Matt Asay, an executive at Alfresco, which makes an open-source content management system. "It is simultaneously the most interesting and dangerous Microsoft technology, and has largely caught its competitors napping."
Microsoft has managed to undercut even the open-source companies playing in the business software market by giving away a free basic license to SharePoint if they already have Windows Server. "It's a brilliant strategy that mimics open source in its viral, free distribution, but transcends open source in its ability to lock customers into a complete, not-free-at-all Microsoft stack - one for which they'll pay more and more the deeper they get into SharePoint," Mr. Asay said. Microsoft's SharePoint Thrives in the Recession [Aug 7]
SharePoint is the hottest selling server side product for Microsoft ever.
In its next iteration, SharePoint will have "stronger ties to the corporate search technology Microsoft acquired in the $1.2 billion purchase of Fast Search and Transfer. Best Buy uses the Fast technology today to provide on-the-fly pricing information to customers performing product searches on its Web site."
The Net Applications global market stats for July are out. The weakness of Linux and FOSS in these stats is startling - and if you were looking for evidence of a real "death spiral," this would be a good place to begin.
Operating System Market Share [Rounded]
XP 73%
Vista 18%
OSX 10.5 3%
Linux 1%
OSX 10.4 1%
W2K 1%
Win 7 1%
Browser Version Market Share
IE 6 27%
IE 7 23%
FFOX 3 16%
IE 8 12%
FFOX 3.5 5%
Chrome 2%
Safari 2%
Country Level Weighting
They should have been forced to use Netscape 4 for a year before rendering their decision. Here is roughly what Netscape 4 was like. Oh look, I'm loading a web page....and now its crashed/grumbles....reloads Netscape 4/ alright! Here comes my webpage...and Netscape 4 has locked smooth up and taken the PC with it. /grumbles as he restarts the machine. Loads IE when it has finally reloaded and reconnected to dialup/ Oh look here comes my webpage /winces, and waits for crash or lockup/ Hey! I'm actually looking at a webpage! And the PC is still running! Thanks MSFT!
You see it wasn't that IE was all that and a bag of chips, it was that it didn't crash and freeze and shit itself every 5 minutes like Netscape 4 did. The original Netscape 4 was such a horrible pile of shit that it couldn't even reasonably be called alpha quality. By the time they made Netscape 4 halfway stable it was simply too late, folks had gotten tired of the crashes and freezes and moved on. It really is that simple. After all nobody paid me and all my customers to switch to IE, it was the POS Netscape 4 that did that all by itself. If Netscape 4 wouldn't have been a total POS they would probably still be around and have a good chunk of the market, as users hate change and the Netscape UI was actually quite nice. Too bad with NS4 they didn't bother hooking a working engine to their UI.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This isn't a "geek" issue. It's a security issue. Even if I wanted to, the organization I work for is restricted by some pretty severe privacy rules, which makes storing on the Cloud (or, more to the point, on someone else's servers) all but impossible. I suppose, if I looked hard enough, I could find a service, but considering the hoops I'd have to jump through, and still face the possibility that my managers would say no simply makes the whole thing a losing proposition.
What's more, and this is something we face with our satellite offices, network infrastructure does go down. The more apps that are remotely hosted (either on the main office servers or on hosted services), the more likely that a network failure beyond my networks will severely hamper the satellites' capacity to do the work. The way my networks work now, if some moron with a backhoe comes along and rips up the fiber, they can still use their office apps and contact management software, in other words, they're not twiddling their thumbs until someone fixes the outage.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.