Chrome OS Designed To Start Microsoft Death Spiral 817
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."
Entirely Net-Based? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Malodorous Headline (Score:5, Informative)
or pinch Adobe into supporting Flash on Linux
They've supported Flash on Linux for quite some time now since they started doing simultaneous OS releases. Linux was even the first to get experimental 64-bit support.
Re:Start the Microsoft death spiral? What again? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft has been in a death spiral for years.
Huh? They've increased revenues for 5 straight years now at around 10%. And they're last year net income grew 25% over 2007. Yeah, that's a real death spiral. Gee, I wish I could run a company in a "death spiral" that generates 60 billion in revenue and almost 18 billion in net income.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Informative)
And not only that, but the entire Xbox 360 platform would have to die off with it, since all development is done in Windows and Visual Studio.
If you want to RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:2, Informative)
Does OS X support DirectX games? No? Goodbye.
signed: Every gamer who has a PC
Re:Malodorous Headline (Score:3, Informative)
Your doing it wrong, i have no such errors file a bug report if you want it fixed (thats why its alpha/beta software)
as for gp, just because to versions have the same number does not make them equal, flash on linux still sucks!
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Informative)
E-mail is an application that only makes sense if there's a network connection
Have you ever been in a train or plane with three days of e-mails to catch up with ? Obviously not :-)
Re:I see where this is going ... (Score:3, Informative)
And Google Bash will say:
Did you mean: apt- cache search [slashdot.org]
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, MacOS is actually better than Windows.
Put simply, Apple makes technology for the end user rather than
as a means to making money or a product to be sold to OEMs.
This is something that has always been apparent in Apple products
even if you don't necessarily agree with what their user-centric
focus led them to.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? Why not microkernel? (Score:3, Informative)
It ain't the kernel that's slow and bloated about either Windows or Linux.
Re:Start the Microsoft death spiral? What again? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sorry, but 2007? Really? I can't tell if it's just a typo or what, but either way, how about some up-to-date news on that? Is that too much to ask [indiatimes.com]?
Re:Hogwash (Score:1, Informative)
Both the US and EU court decided that M$ used their monopoly position to force Netscape out of business. But hey, you are still free to believe it was Netscape's fault.
Yes, but Netscape still sucked... incredibly slow...
Re:Entirely Net-Based? Why not microkernel? (Score:3, Informative)
Look where Tanenebaum's "oh so superior" OS has gone in the past decade and a half compared to the "bloatware" Linus released.
While I agree with the rest of your post, this example is just wrong.
Minix adoption has nothing to do with the architecture, and everthing to do with the license and Tannenbaum's goal, which was a simple OS to use for education.
Up until recently Minix's license was almost hostile to commerical exploitation, and Tannenbaum himself refused patches and feature requests [softpanorama.org] that would make Minix more than an educational tool.
It really had nothing to do with the architecture, and everything to do with the personalities of the people behind the projects.
Re:My Bet (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, every administration since Carter has been involved with "deregulation" in the financial industry. Giant corporations writing new rules knows no party lines.
The biggest reason why this economy stinks is because of the Federal Reserve. Allowing a small minority to manipulate the monetary supply is not going to benefit the vast majority of people in the long run. Why do you think well over half of the House has co-sponsored HR 1207, a bill which would fully audit the Federal Reserve for the firs time in its history?
Without Mr. Gates, I don't see Microsoft as a "protected" company anymore. I could easily see Google as overtaking it within the next decade in the OS market.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:2, Informative)
In one of the Terry Pratchet novels, Sam Vimes realizes that the wealthy stay that way because they buy ONE well-built product that lasts, while the poor buy shoddy crap that they have to replace over and over. In his case it was shoes. In your case, it's your computer.
I've seen these things more times than I care to count - either the batteries die, the power jacks break, the case starts to break and crack, the CD/DVD drive dies, etc. The build and component quality on a $300-$400 computer is ABYSMAL - there's simply no way to get quality components, build quality, support, etc in that kind of budget. I'm sure that 15" brick is 1280x800 so it has huge pixels (but it's 15" and bigger is better!), it probably weighs in excess of 6lbs due to the screen size and thick plastic it's made of, has anemic graphics and modest processing power, and is built like shit. And you're likely replacing it every year because of it.
If you're comparing Apple hardware against bargain basement PC it's not going to line up. They're simply not built the same, or with the same components. If you'll notice, Dell, Lenovo, and others offer several lines of computers that have overlapping specs - and they typically have a line with similar specs and components as a Mac - at similar prices. But we've been over that a million times. If you want a $400 computer, you are not getting it from Apple, and never will. I'd like an affordable Tesla. That's also not happening.
I've converted at least a dozen people over the last decade to Macs. While the OS has had a lot to do with it, the high build quality of the hardware has been a MAJOR factor - they simply have not had anywhere near the problems they had on their PC's (Lenovo, Dells, home-built, and Shuttles). Macs aren't perfect and they do break sometimes, but that extra money you're paying IS getting you real value - it's not just the logo. I guarantee if you tried one, within a month you'd be wondering why you didn't sooner.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Informative)
Just like Google!
Re:Malodorous Headline (Score:3, Informative)
I can't think of any companies that provide something positive for the customer but no return for shareholders that are still in business.
Non-profit corporations. Note I mean non-profit by choice, such as some hospitals, charities, not non-profit by mismanagement like GM.
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Informative)
I believe Marge's line was : "Homer, quiet. You'll queer the deal."
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Informative)
MARGE Homer quiet. Acquire the deal.
Pedant alert... Marge: Homer quiet! You'll queer the deal.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Informative)
OS/2 Warp 3 shipped with TCP/IP and a SLIP dialer (the first go-around didn't have a browser, you had to download Web Explorer, mind you, back then, Gopher was still a major competitor). Amiga, as I recall, also had SLIP connectivity. People were using Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.1 and using Netscape. Chicago's development team hadn't even really considered the Internet (as I recall, Bill Gates admitted that he was blindsided by the Internet), but when it became clear that the Internet was now consumer-ready, the networking engine in Windows for Workgroups was hastily patched on to Windows 95 (and done very badly, Windows 95 had a horribly unreliable TCP/IP stack, I was doing tech support for an ISP at the time, and we got adept at instructing customers on how to reinstall Winsock).
In fact, there's a lasting legacy of Microsoft's near miss. Pretty much every attempt Redmond has made to create THE Internet portal has failed miserably. How many times was MSN rebooted? How long did Live last? We'll see how Bing does, but if it fails, then history is going to record that while Microsoft remained the computing platform de jeur, it never was able to create a web presence to equal their platform dominance.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:1, Informative)
"It has a microkernel architecture, which tends to mean greater stability, but also means a hit to performance"
Not really, no - I don't think either Apple or NeXT used the mach microkernel per se:
"Neither Mac OS X nor FreeBSD maintain the microkernel structure pioneered in Mach, although Mac OS X continues to offer microkernel Inter-Process Communication and control primitives for use directly by applications."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_%28kernel%29
I think OSX has a "hybrid" kernel for efficiency reasons, thus pretty much removing the advantages of a microkernel.
Re:Not the cost of the computer (Score:2, Informative)
Hmmmm... That entirely depends. My wifes computer was bought in fall 2003, which is before I knew her. It was a virus-infested cesspool, especially because that PC was the only one with an Internet connection and her little brother used it for what teenage boys do on the Internet.... Without a up to date antivirus, using Internet Explorer and downloading anything and everything because he knew nothing about the Internet.[1]
Anyway, I reformatted that machine, locked it down, gave everyone concerned a Limited User account (including me, Admin is for configuration only) and set Firefox default everywhere. From that point on: pure stability and no problems at all.
This machine is still working to this day and is thus 6 years operational with only one day of hard work on it. (The reinstallation) I think that a pretty decent return on investment.
[1] I won't blame him alone, because later after the reinstall my wife called me once and asked me why the download wasn't working. She had been looking for clipart for her classes. What was on the screen was an animated gif doing as if it was downloading something and I bet that if she had gone to that site with Internet Explorer (while being Admin, which she wasn't) the machine would have been owned. So saying porn alone is the root of all rootkits is alas not true.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Informative)
"the implementation today will be much faster because networks are much faster"
That is so easy for city boys and girls to say. What about those of us who live in Outback, Nowhere? Applications get more and more bloated, protocols seem to take on a life of their own, pages are often written badly with far to much content, and EVERYONE relies on either Flash or Java. The net result? My 1/2 MB connection oftentimes seems slower than the 56k I finally got rid of about 2 yrs ago.
It's wonderful that peope who live close to a university, like downtown Boston, can run all their apps over the web. But, what about the REST of the country?
About the time that we can get affordabe 5MB connections, the rest of you will have written yet more bloated software, and that will be inadequate!
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Informative)
What, thousands of man-hours for games? Look around you, majority of people don't play games (or at least you wouldn't call them PC games - Peggle, Solitaire, etc.; that is a typical PC game)
Nowadays majority of time of average user is spent in the browser. Heck, I even see a trend of listening to music "from the cloud". Convince them that writing (no, they don't need MS or even Open Office, formatting with Tab, Space & Enter, styles unknown to them) or presentations (they are a travesty usually anyway...) can be also done in a browser...and there's your market for Chrome OS.
Having said that, I also think that Chrome OS won't succeed on "large" machines. But I also suspect that those using today cheap laptops for all their (pretty basic) needs will, in some part, shift towards using smaller form factor.