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."
Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
My Bet (Score:4, Insightful)
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. This is false. IT is growing and will continue to grow as long as there is an economy to support.
Microsoft likely will need to reposition itself in the market as Google grows. However, Microsoft will be a big player for at least another generation and likely many more.
" historical weakness in terms of networking" (Score:2, Insightful)
Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Windows will endure. (Score:1, Insightful)
oh FFS slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Good luck with that (Score:2, Insightful)
if apple would sell their OS separate from the hardware they'd be pummeling MS
or from translationparty.com:
ååäãã OS ãããffãf--ãfç¾ã®ãfãf¼ãfã¦ããã®è©å£ãä¾åã--ã¦ãããååããã®MSãã(TM)
back into English
In the morning, OS, if not dependent on hardware sales for Apple, MS is
back into Japanese
æoeããã OSã®ååãããffãf--ãfã®ãfãf¼ãfã¦ããè©å£ã®MSãä¾åããOEã¦ãã¾ãã"
back into English
In the morning, OS, if Apple's hardware sales are not dependent on MS
Chrome isn't an OS (Score:5, Insightful)
It is geated for appliances, not general-purpose computers.
Now I will grant that most of what people do today would be easily fulfilled by an appliance. And we would all be far more secure with appliances that could not be subverted by botnets, viruses, trojans, etc. An email/web appliance would satisfy 99% of home users and probably could be slightly extended with web applications to work for 50-60% of business users as well.
So who is building the hot new appliance? Nobody. All previous email appliances have died, mostly from a lack of functionality. Today people see a very false progression from a full-function appliance to a "real ocmputer" as being a short leap, so why not take it? The reality is the appliance with limited (or zero) local storage and no ability to install software (or trojans, viruses, botnets, etc.) would be much, much better for everyone using the Internet.
Could you make an appliance immune to phishing? Probably.
OK, so Chrome OS would be great for an appliance... except nobody is even contemplating building an appliance today. With the thousands (millions?) of Windows-based x86 applications out there for our general-purpose computers, who is going to displace Microsoft? An OS with a rich API, multimedia capabilities and access to the full capabilities of a computer? Or an OS where the API is a browser and nothing else?
Sorry, but Chrome OS might be OK for a netbook. Maybe. It has no place on a desktop computer.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I really must object. This is a dangerous stance as I cannot say I've seen much more of Chrome OS than hype but let's imagine it's got really good hardware support and really good software support (tangible). Now let's also say that it's geared toward virtualization ... which this cloud article leads me to believe. Now let's also assume that it works (as a virtualized instance) on every other operating system. Okay, so my problem with OSX is that I can't just download it and run it legally on whatever the hell I want. That's overcome. The other thing is that people are going to go looking for solutions to problems. If Chrome OS is that solution, they will be able to virtualize it, see that it works and probably make the switch if they want to. The whole preview first thing would be benefit since it's going to be open source.
... but then we're on to the corporate strong arm support Google is promising. Hardware and flash support would make a lot of people happy (as I posted earlier).
Also, everyone can be encouraged to try it virtualized like any other application and get rid of it if they don't like it with no change to their system. Very appealing trial marketing here. Also, it's open source, OSX isn't.
There's a lot of differences I could continue to cite but I think you're mistaken in comparing it to OSX's failed attempt at desktop domination. You'd do better to compare it to Linux's failed attempt at the desktop
Re:My Bet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
OS X isn't Apple's downfall, its the fact their computers are so annoyingly expensive that most people won't buy them. I know I don't have $1K to spend on a laptop, especially when I can buy a $300 laptop that meets all my needs, has a 15 inch screen and works decently with Linux. Macs are great if you have the money, but I don't have $600 I can just spend on a desktop that will quickly go obsolete, is a pain to upgrade and requires a converter to use my VGA monitor.
Nice article (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a good article, and well-worth reading. But it bears only a marginal resemblence to the teaser headline CmdrTaco has slapped on it...
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anticompetative behaviour (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's why not everyone uses g-mail (and similar), and why many companies ban its use.
What the GP tried to tell you, but I think you missed, is that there isn't an either/or situation, but room for many players with different types of solutions.
Re:My Bet (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Good Luck With That (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't count the number of companies that have made the same claims only to be crushed by the Microsoft Juggernaut by simply having better PR and marketing. In fact the Bing marketing blitz over the last month has been very visible and well put together. Google search is remarkable but some of its functionality is not at all intuitive for the lay-searcher. Microsoft is trying to take advantage of that and if there's one thing Microsoft IS good at it's marketing.
Re:Malodorous Headline (Score:2, Insightful)
Um..so you believe that Windows dominance derives from the primary goal of "[doing] something positive for the customer"? Perhaps in a convoluted sense that's the case, but the primary goal of Windows 1.x was to prevent the Macintosh from luring away customers (and it wasn't under Windows 2.x until the promised "overlapping windows" was available), Windows 3.x was to prevent IBM OS/2 from surplanting MS-DOS, Windows 9x was to migrate the existing MS-DOS lock-in on the PC to a much more complex windowing system lock-in which companies like Digital Research couldn't readily copy, and Windows XP was chosen as the consumer line to cut down on handling duplicate code in two Windows code bases.
I'm certain that there were various people who worked on Windows who cared about the consumer, but along the way the driving force behind Windows has almost entire been about maintaining or growing a consistent revenue stream. Not pissing off the customers too much has been second place, at best.
Having said that, I don't think it's at all a good thing if Chrome OS was being created to destroy Microsoft. But, I think it's a fantasy to believe that people with an agenda can't succeed in their agenda even if it seems to violate a supposed core tenent of the free market. Perhaps if there were an infinite number of OS companies and they could create software that's 100% compatable with each other it'd hold, but Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are in many ways their own market precisely because of incompatability; to that end, the many distros of Linux are probably the closest thing to the "infinite number of OS companies" with the *BSDs/Unixes being the next closest.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget they are also willing to purchase any small companies that threaten comptition.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
This "superior" line always bothers me a little. Anyone who reads my posts here knows I dislike Microsoft intensely, but is OSX really any better than Windows? It has a microkernel architecture, which tends to mean greater stability, but also means a hit to performance. Windows still runs on a larger variety of hardware. If you toss something like Cygwin in, you've pretty much got the equivalent of the BSD userland that ships with OSX. We could go on about interface, but to be honest, I think all GUIs kinda suck (I learned my trade on DOS and *nix machines, and still revert to the command line for all but the simpler file copy operations). OSX certainly is less "messy" than Windows, but judging by the number of people who prefer KDE over Gnome, I would suspect some people like busy desktops, and some people like all-but-empty desktops.
When I'm planning a new server, OSX never really crosses my mind. For 90% of the tasks, I'll pick a Linux or BSD box; no GUI, a quarter century worth the tried and tested tools (that kind of conservatism appeals to people like me, who don't want to have to rewrite shell scripts everytime the OS maker decides to shake things up), incredible support (I've gotten solutions to problems in an hour for problems I was having with Samba and ACLs) and, well, very low licensing costs. I'll use Windows for domain controllers and Exchange servers, and for the odd server app that requires Windows. As to the users on the network, well most of them would have seizures if Office 2003 didn't show up, and I can pick up a low-end Windows box for web browsing, word processing and spreadsheets (which encompasses about 95% of what my users do) for significantly less than anything Apple offers.
As to security, the only reason non-Windows machines sem more secure is because market share is too low for most malware writers to waste their time. But look at recent iPhone SMS attacks. Apple has no special magic security aura, and neither does Linux or BSD, though I will grant that because most things do not run as root, security flaws tend to be more limited.
So, to my mind, "superior" is wholly subjective. It depends entirely on the parameters.
yet Google and Apple are locked into Active Sync (Score:3, Insightful)
for their cloud and cell phone products
and Google's products are routinely left unpolished in the usability arena unlike Apple and MS. i gave up trying to scan my photos into Picasa and went back to one of Microsoft's free apps or one of the ones in MS Office. the google desktop has been banned in a lot of companies for its ability to kill MS Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server. Android is seen only on brand x cell phones where no one cares what the model is. iphone and pre seem to get the cool branding.
If Chrome OS is like any other Google product then Apple and MS have nothing to worry about.
If Google keeps current attitude, it will hurt (Score:5, Insightful)
If Google passes the line between privacy and convenience, we will read some horror stories about it and it can actually lead to some very interesting developments like FSF getting into the future drama as it will be based on Linux.
We may end up reading things like "World's first spyware OS" right here, on Slashdot. We may see FSF or Linus openly protest it.
Google thinks everyone buys their "not evil" kind of slogans and design software based on it. Someone should remind them that those times are over. Also, being open source won`t change a thing. If it gathers your location and posts it to Google servers, it won`t matter if it is open source or not. Even if they hire (!) rms to code it, it won`t matter.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple provides awesome support through apple care (well worth the investment if you are a heavy user of laptops, e.g. carting it around everywhere and actually using it). Sure, if all you do is take your laptop to work and back, any laptop would really suffice. It's not undergoing much wear and tear. But if you're traveling and putting a lot of strain on it, I find the policies Apple has are really good.
Granted, some of their laptops (esp the sub-1000 macbook with the plastic shell) had issues under heavy usage, but all the fixes were free under apple care...
That's probably not much different than other companies now, so maybe Dell or something might offer a better total package, but honestly I can't stand the sight of some of their machines.. they are so clunky looking.
Also, being on Mac OS X, I really appreciate not having to tinker constantly, or have to deal with broken packages, broken configs, hardware on newer machines not working properly with linux... ugh.
Mac OS X has it's fair share of issues but from my own personal experience, I have not had any problems. I kind of miss the power and customizability of linux, but NOT the endless fiddling!
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, as you put it, ChromeOS is nothing more than a customized Linux distro (wow, never saw that before) with a bunch of cloud extensions (never saw that before either). So on that score you've got a point.
But the difference between Chrome OS and Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, Mandriva or whatever is that it's going to be Google Chrome OS. The whole thing is a marketing game, and it's there that Google may be able to penetrate.
Re:Panties STINK! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but it sure makes the summary less linkable.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
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'.
Not the cost of the computer (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [blogspot.com]
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 [blogspot.com]
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
more like close to $3000 for a 15" MBP once you get the 9600M which is still obsolete compared to current PC laptop graphics cards, Applecare, tax and a few other accessories. You can configure a Dell laptop with better specs for $1500. only difference is MBP's have DDR 3 RAM which is expensive and you'll probably never notice the difference. but the MBP is 8 ounces lighter for all you wimps out there
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
...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...).
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly you can get a cheaper laptop/desktop than Apple. If all you value is money, then Apples are definitely not worth their value. If you value other things than money, than Apples might be worth it. I spent over 15 years building desktops at home and work. Some ran Windows; some ran Linux. I have a networked MythTV system at home. The reason I bought a Mac is my time has become more valuable than the money.
I did a quick comparison and the price difference between the cheapest PC laptop and the cheapest Mac was about a few days worth of work. Then I thought about all the times I had to re-install Windows XP (about once a year to remove cruft), all the times I updated my Linux boxes and had to fix something else, I decided to take a chance on an Mac. If it didn't work out I only lost a few days of work.
That was 3 years ago almost. I don't think I have spent an entire day since I bought my Mac laptop on fixing issues and it has been up 24/7 unless I was traveling with it. The only trouble I had with it was when I manually updated files I should not have updated. I had found some websites that told me how to "tweak" my Mac. To be fair, the sites warned me that making the changes could be hazardous, but I didn't pay enough heed to the warnings.
Re:My Bet (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're correct, but I don't think Microsoft will continue indefinitely as they are now. Like it or not, tons of stuff IS moving onto the web ("cloud" or whatever trendy word they want to call it this week). Linux and Firefox have already shown that enough volunteers are out there to produce software that gets you to that web for FREE. When a free product will do what you want it to people won't continue to shell out mega bucks for windows over and over.
What I think Microsoft will continue to dominate at is Office apps. MS Office has always beat Google Docs for usability and with the introduction of web-based MS Office products I think Microsoft is already preparing to capitalize on it's strengths.
Besides Office, (and windows which as mentioned I think has a limited lifespan left), they also are prime supplies of development tools (Visual Studio) and SQL Server. In the future I see ports of SQL Server to non-Windows platforms, as well as more shifts in Visual Studio towards developing web-based applications.
Having worked in corporate IT, I can honestly say that while Google or Microsoft hosting our web based apps just won't fly, hosting web based application in house on our own servers is a God-send. Switching out user workstations is trivial, there's no worry about the users saving the data into the wrong location, and upgrading an application only has to be done once. Not to mention we just get fewer "quirky" machines this way. If the browser works right and the server is configured right, it works. No DLL's to track down and register on one stubborn machine or anything.
So yeah, I think MS has strengths and will continue to be powerful and profitable for a time to come, but the Microsoft of 20 years from now will very likely not look much like the Microsoft of today.
Re:Malodorous Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess the expression is a bit too hard. Google in this case has the same view as the Linux community: make operating systems better (and if Windows can't adopt, they will see a slow and steady decline - well, maybe a bit faster than now).
Google's core market are web applications, and they figured they could get a lot of support by doing the right thing and improve on an existing platform.
Currently - out of the perspective of commercial entities - Linux has 3 main problems: minor market penetration, lacks a coherent graphics API/environment/spec./SDK and it is hard to deploy packages that are fully or partly closed source.
If Google improves these aspects and packages it in an easy to use system (for everybody - which means the system has defaults that decide a standard environment for the user without the need to use a command line for basic tasks while keeping power underneath to please devs.), than they will gain a lot of independence for their core market.
They figured that developing a system from scratch is not that simple (cheap), and that an active developer base is very valuable, so it's a good way way to build on the Linux platform.
Anyway, as long as Google plays the right cards this has some interesting potential to catalyse the disruptive technology that Linux/OSS represents.
I have to get some popcorn now.
ps: The key is still the OEM market, and I'm very curious how the battles on that field will be fought.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
How many corporations use gmail as their email system?
Personally, I use Gmail, but I still want my files to be on my computers and on my own backups.
Especially since Gmail lost about 4 years of my mail archives and couldn't be bothered to restore them from backup (if they ever have backups)
Re:Want me to run Chrome? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, you raise good points about linux. I'm a UNIX admin by trade and I'm fairly familiar with all flavours of unix/linux but I still use 75% windows at my house for those reasons. The thing with Linux is, even if you do know what you are doing, the fact of the matter is that there is often still a long process to go through to get something to work.
Sadly, most linux developers take the attitude of 'Fine we don't need you' instead of really hearing and trying to understand the problem.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:2, Insightful)
people will want their own files & data & OS to really be their own including the OS
No, people want something that works for as cheaply as they can get it. The concept of ownership isn't even noticed by most people (in the software world) until the thing that was believed to be "owned" is taken away, and Microsoft isn't stupid enough to take something away from enough people to cause a ruckus.
Most people also don't know or care about software updates. If XP stops automatically downloading them in 2013 or whenever the most recent EOL extension is, people using XP will not notice. Or if they do notice, they'll think, "Yay! No more rebooting!"
You have a really high opinion of people in general. I'm guessing that you don't work in IT.
Comment removed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:oh FFS slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
It's funny. He admits that for years /. has been sounding off about the death of MS... then questions why they're sounding off about the death of MS.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? Why not microkernel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Google observes that Windows is too complicated, slow and bloated. But another big bloated monolithic solution such as the Linux kernel doesn't seem an answer. Why don't they go with a microkernel architecture based on something such as Minix 3? We've known for years the potential advantages of microkernels: smaller, simpler, more robust.
You've just got yourself tied up here already. NT is probably the most popular microkernel architecture in the world. What makes it "hybrid" is pretty minimal... it's a lean mean high-performance microkernel. A lot of what still made it hybrid has gone away in NT 6.
I don't think Chrome OS has a shot in hell in outperforming Windows 7 or Mac OS X at any media application aside from the Chrome Browser itself. Google simply lacks the organization and expertise to create something like DirectX or CoreVideo, or any of the advanced mature media frameworks available in the big name desktops. If they really had that capability, it would have started peaking out in Android, which lacks all sorts of hardware acceleration features that Win CE and iPhone OS offered. It's very web-ish.
Let's be clear: we're talking about an in-development environment that will essentially be a web browser running on a framebuffer on a linux kernel with a lean non-gnu stack. It's not a general purpose OS. It's going to grab a small chunk of the super-casual market such as netbooks, probably defeat any desktop linux in existence by an order of magnitude, then fall flat on its face in front of anyone who needs to get serious work done or produce attractive documents or edit media, from housewives to students to professionals.
What we're looking at isn't a juggernaut but a curiosity. I anticipate it's going to kick ass for people who only use their web browser, though. It'll really simplify things for them and offer them an extremely fast boot-to-web experience. I think it will succeed in what it's trying to accomplish, but it's just far too small in scope.
And even the potential for formal verification to prove that it really is bug free, something that Windows and Linux are far too large to ever accomplish.
What sort of verification would you be talking about? We're talking about a desktop environment built out of WebKit, so I think their potential security will be lower than what Windows offers... I think they're banking on the fact that they likely won't offer a native execution environment outside of Native Client. Of course, this is assuming Native Client isn't just a modern ActiveX waiting to be exploited upon deployment.
The main disadvantage I've heard is a perception that a microkernel architecture by necessity imposes a performance penalty. The ability to survive buggy driver code has a flip side in the supposed overhead required to jump in and out of user space whenever the microkernel calls on these drivers.
There are modern pure microkernels out there which perform blazingly fast... Green Hills INTEGRITY is an example. They've gotten around a lot of these little problems in a brilliant way. The open source community is trapped within debates from the early 80's, it's really big world outside of UNIX. Microkernels beat Monoliths on every front aside from brute simplicity. Monoliths can be "elegant," but linux is anything but. Compared to the gnu/linux ecosystem, Windows is extremely well organized and clearly architected.
Google is not looking to innovate in the operating system market, clearly. They're simply doing what so many desktop linux distributions failed at when trying to make a casual OS. They're using Linux because it'll save them time writing difficult boot and driver code and ultimately save them money. They're not writing their own kernel because they're not really going to compete with Windows. I don't think Google really has what it takes to create a serious new kernel, anyway-- or even clean up Minix enough that it performs competitively.
My final
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, it's not like Microsoft beat Netscape with a superior product, but Netscape completely wasted their market share on bad business decisions.
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.
Re:Cloud Computing (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that most of the people that hang here is not a good representation of the "common people". Common people don't know much about computers, internet or security. And they don't care. They use what's fun and easy, even if it's bug-ridden, insecure, unhealthy and radioactive. They are not computer geeks, they're just people.
And people, not geeks like you and me, is what drives the market. If Chrome OS is easier and funnier to use than Windows, many people will use it. Even if has a security hole so big that you coud fit a truck into it, even if it makes their pictures being naked and drunk available to anyone in the Internet. Because they, and most of their friends, won't care. They just want to play with the damn thing.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The OS is not the key to market share. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nothing to do with the OS. There are two factors that drive change. Price, and features (and by features, I actually mean the software you can use on it. The OS is worthless on its own to an end user.)
OSX (or the hardware that runs it) is more expensive, so that keeps many users, and big business out.
Linux may be free, but there's no truly viable MS Office alternative, nothing that matches Exchange, there's no professional level Photoshop, there's nothing to edit videos with, nor post processing, good luck doing complex audio work. Sure you can browse the web, and do many things, but not at the convenience/utility level that you can in Windows. If you work in an office environment, you'd have to be a zealot to use Open Office, and you'd struggle to get your corporate email and meeting system working. If you are a creative professional -- Linux is completely worthless. Sorry, but it is. I wish that were not the case, but there's no professional-level creative apps for Linux.
And that's is why there's been no year of Linux so far. End users don't care about the OS that much, they care about what they can install on it. Of all the programs available for Linux, few are of comparable quality to those available to Windows or OSX.
And this will be the case for Chrome OS too -- at least in the short term.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] That means Google Chrome won't have a Killer App, [...]
Not a "killer app" but "killer features" like having always the latest software version, having access to professional tools on demand - while at the beach in between different kinds of surfing - tools you wouldn't dream of installing on Windows (because of the price, or just because you didn't think in time to purchase/download them).
I think a few years from now we will look back and see that through this way of thinking a whole new class of applications will evolve. Like how we take Facebook, cell phones, online news, email etc. for granted, who would have thought that 20 years ago?
For now the weak point is the availability of internet access...
The latest software version can be(and is) taken care of with updates. Access to professional tools on demand? So stuff similar to AutoCad would be free to use on the Web from the beach and would work as fast as AutoCad on Windows? I'm sorry but this sounds like hyperbole and almost vaporware. And for your claim that "a whole new class of applications will evolve", what prevents them currently from evolving on Windows/OS X/Linux ? What do you think will Chrome OS enable that the current OSes cannot? The point is that not everything needs internet access and hence doesn't need to be used in a browser. Not to mention that HTML/JS/AJAX/CSS is one of the worst development platforms ever in terms of developer effort requirement to make things working.
Re:My Bet (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the repeal of Glass-Steagal is a figment of your imagination. The 2004 relaxing of the SEC's net capital rule never happened. CFMA 2000 isn't what allowed credit default swaps setting up a domino effect of capital and credit. Yeah man. Keep dreaming.
Oh, and stop trolling message boards with your misinformation.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
> I won't believe Microsoft's going down the tubes until I actually see Microsoft down the tubes.
Oh I agree they should not be 'misunderestimated'. But this is a totally new threat. Netscape was a company and could be killed. Microsoft 'choked off their air supply' and they died. But note what happened next:
"Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers
grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the
fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own
image as promised by the sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their
children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.
from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)"
Netscape didn't just take their source tree with them into the long sleep of death. They cast it out into a lonely world where it suffered for years, but now it is back and kicking butt. And without much of a corporate structure to attack.
Now it gets worse again. The world is changing, and in ways Microsoft is finding it hard to follow. All of the other efforts at Microsoft lose money, supported by the gushers of cash Windows and Office produce. They grew to believe that 'every non-mac PC would pay tribute to Microsoft forever and every corporate PC will license Office.' And they might continue to do so. But the price of a PC is falling to such new low prices they simply cannot support the current pricing for Windows. So they must soon make a decision. Lower the price and maintain the universal aspect of Windows or maintain the cash cow by focusing on the more profitable end of the PC range. Both probably aren't an option any more and the question is whether either can be maintained for long without the other. There just aren't enough PCs sold to make the stockholders happy with a $25 license fee. And there probably won't long be enough expensive PCs sold to keep the profits flowing with $100 licenses either.
So the only good option they have is to quickly get the other divisions to stop being places to bury the obscene profits from Windows and Office and get them profitable as new revenue flows to replace the ones about to go in to decline. So the big question is: Can an XBox sold at a profit compete?
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
I used Netscape instead of IE, and it was pretty damn bloated. The feature-set was just barely worth dealing with the sluggish performance. Especially since IE wasn't exactly a lean mean browsing machine at the time. If it had been, the would not have needed to abuse their position.
I also think the EU's ruling that shipping windows with IE as illegal doesn't make a lot of sense, given all the other stuff they ship with windows and always have shipped with windows. Why is only one of them a bad thing? If the others are ok, why is the browser not?
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
MacOS 10 is not the maggot infested malware fest that Windows is.
For that reason alone and despite of all of it's "walled garden"
nonsense and being just different enough to be annoying it is a
clearly superior product for the consumer.
"Performance" is a really stupid thing to focus on for a consumer
product. A consumer product first needs to be robust. Unfortunately
consumers tend to first focus on CHEAP or perhaps "brand awareness".
I don't give a damn if MacOS is a microkernel. I'm more concerned with
whether or not I will being doing unpaid tech support for Jobs or Gates.
I don't want to be the one left holding the bag when their piss-poor
engineering choices cause problems.
Not every Linux user is allergic to GUIs and some of us have been using them since the System 6 days.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that Mac Pro [apple.com] is Apple's top line (current models start at $2,499 USD), I would hope it would still be working six years later.
To reiterate, the current Mac Pro line all have single or dual quad-core processors in them, 3+ GB of RAM, 640GB+ Hard Drive, etc...
Of course, you can't upgrade to OSX 10.6, as Apple is dropping support for PowerPC Macs in Snow Leopard [apple.com]. Since Apple only announced Intel Macs four years ago...
Oh, and I will note that I got a computer with similar specs to the current $2,499 Mac Pro from HP for $939.
What's the Killer App? (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows has Office, Photoshop, web browsing and email, and a huge pile of big-name games from big-name vendors.
MacOS has Office, Photoshop, web browsing and email, Final Cut Studio, and a (very, very) few of the big-name games from the big-name vendors.
Linux (Ubuntu, Chrome, etc) has OpenOffice, web browsing and email.
Not intentionally trolling here, but the fact is that not everybody is a web or software developer. Every modern OS has a basic suite of internet access and media playback apps, but the fact is that people buy windows machines for a few reasons - it's What They Know, They Don't Know Any Better, and Their Game Or Application Doesn't Run On Anything Else* being the most common.
Bottom line, if all you need is a browser, a mail client, media software and a text editor... you can be OS Agnostic. You can choose whatever works best for you. Chrome could work for you as well as Mac OS X or Ubuntu or whatever.
If you're a gamer, a graphic artist, or do any sort of 3d modeling, Linux isn't on the table... and neither is the idea of running your application in a web browser.
From what I've read, I'd be able to do with Chrome what I can do with every other current OS on the market. And there's a LOT I won't be able to do with it.
So. What's the killer app? What compelling reason is there to use Chrome when everything out there already does web and email while giving me productivity ability that still doesn't exist on linux?
Disclaimer : I was seriously thinking on getting a netbook until I got my iPhone, at which point a netbook seemed pretty irrelevant. I was looking at Hackintoshing a Dell Mini 9, as the price is right and it would give me the applications I want to be able to use on the fly - stuff I can't do with the iPhone, but stuff I wouldn't be able to do with ChromeOS, either.
* File format tie-in is a big one here - I can't move to linux even if I wanted to thanks to my productivity hinging on (literally) hundreds of gigs of .psd and .max files. Switching to a 3d app that isn't Max or a pixel-pusher that isn't Photoshop would incur hundreds of hours of work cleaning up and retexturing models, environments and source documents for the new app, to say nothing of the learning curve.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know what you're using, but it's most certainly not a six year old "Mac Pro", seeing as that was first released in 2006. And if you are on a Power Mac G5, you're going to be left out in the cold shortly as Snow Leopard requires Intel. It will take a while for PPC software to dry up thanks to universal binaries, but your days are numbered. Admittedly, you only need four more years to reach a decade - but those are going to be longer and longer years.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
Finally, a voice of reason.
-dZ.
DirectX (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is it than whenever there's one of these death to microsoft articles, no one brings up DirectX?
Are there any decent games for a Mac since Oregon trail? Are there any 3D games for Linux that don't look like Tron?
Destroying Microsoft is not a business model. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are missing the point. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
6 year old Mac Pro? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hm, I bought a Mac Pro [wikipedia.org] when they first came out 3 years ago. I don't understand how yours came to age twice as fast as mine...
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent back up. It's not flamebait, and relevant to the conversation.
Eric Schmidt tried to battle Microsoft when he was at Novell, so there's no wonder that he's reluctant now. It's going to take more than the half-assed Google Docs and warmed over Linux distro to beat Microsoft at their own game. Lots of hardware OEMs will simply refuse to work with Google because they're in fear of Microsoft retribution.
Netscape was indeed illegally thwarted by moves from Microsoft. The settlement evidence is a papertrail around the world.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:1, Insightful)
Been using the same PC for over 5 years now. My wife's is about 6 years, and my laptop is pushing 4 years... never a problem.... I would be shocked if Apple uses anything different hardware wise than say HP or Dell in their workstations and laptops... The shell is the only difference.
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
Web applications are *not* the same as using a dumb terminal connected to a timeshared mainframe. Generally, "source code" is provided by the server, "executed" on the local machine using local resources, and data is stored back on the server. Dumb terminals require faster links, more powerful servers, and will inevitably have higher UI latency than ajax-type applications.
If you have perfectly reliable links to the server, and trust the server to be reliable and secure, web applications are very good, and much better than the old server/dumb terminal system. Of course, those are very tall orders.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it just has to make MS irrelevant.
Irrelevant is a bit of a stretch. Just make it non essential, and you have a severely damaged Microsoft empire.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
From my high-def camera?
Well, sure, I'd love to use my 768kbps upload to push all that up for online video editing so I can get my 1080p, sounds fucking fantastic!
You know, that comment will be damn funny to read in a few years time :-)
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Good luck with that (Score:4, Insightful)
Right because we all know that Xeons themselves run more than $1000. But sure, go on and believe that you have the same spec'd computer as Mac Pro.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Ever used X outside of an academic/office setting with gigabit both ways? It ain't pretty. Or fast.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
As for why this is a good move, it has already been discussed several times. You either understand what monopoly is or you don't.
Best argument ever. "If you don't agree with me it's because you don't understand the concept!" I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:2, Insightful)
And you have a very low opinion of people in general. I'm guessing that people you consider stupid have much better lives than yours and you resent it.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
>The whole web app fad caught on largely because people are too dumb to care.
What? The web caught on because the alternatives like gopher or dumb terminals were terrible compared to being able to embed images and other content. Remember actually using gopher or archie or whatever? Or using a big ugly VMS thin client? Sure, people have nostalgia for this stuff, but its pretty obvious which technology was more marketable.
As far as the web revolution goes, well, I think we're just seeing the natural cheapness of people again. A lot of the web office apps are free, yet Office costs $99 for the student/home edition. Sure, putting these things on the web is putting another layer of junk between you and the code, but if the market consists of cheap people who dont care, then here we are.
Not to mention, you get some big advantages with web based apps. Sure, they'll be slower, but they can store all your documents. You never have to install anything other than a plugin once per browser. You may have 2 or 3 laptops in a typical family, yet everyone just logs into their google apps and does their work. Dad doesnt have to buy the family 5 pack for office.
I think geeks need to stop thinking about which solution is the better technical one and think in terms of markets. The computer industry exists within capitalism. Markets rule, not pedantic geeks arguing over the internet.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
> Yet for all the extra "security" it still is always the first to fall system to get owned at the Pwn2Own contest.
This is much like bragging about Norton SI numbers.
All the Lemming wriggling in the world won't alter the fact that Windows
is commonly and pervasively infested and exploited to a degree that MacOS
or Linux security issues look like background noise in comparison.
You are not going to stop a motivated attacker.
However you can do quite a bit to avoid being infected by the
computing equivalent of merely stepping outside into the sunlight.
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Insightful)
Browser app doesn't have to mean networked, if you have Google Gears.
Browser app doesn't have to mean slower, if you have Native Client.
As someone once said, the web browser is the most successfully distributed virtual machine. As a four-year web developer, I can't think of any non-web app you couldn't match with a web app, at least if you have the aforementioned extensions. And a web app has the advantage of (1) smoother upgrades, (2) easier networking, when you do need it, and (3) easier programming, thanks to interpreted, multiplatform, widely used languages.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Judging by the growing success of web-based applications, I would say that tens of millions of PC users value low price, easy access, instant upgrades, and easy portability over the richer features and superior performance of native applications.
Having said that, I think Google Chrome OS will have a real shot at gaining some netbook market share but not much chance at the home full desktop/laptop market. If you buy a full machine, you want to play games - and unless Google is also secretly tossing tens of thousands of developer man-hours at the Wine project, that's not going to happen.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reason webmail is popular is that people do not like taking the time to configure an email program to connect to their POP3/IMAP server.
Really? Funny. The reason *I* use webmail is because it's available any place where there's Internet access. That's also, as it happens, the same reason I use a service for storing bookmarks (del.icio.us), personal information/notes/etc (a private wiki), some small docs/spreadsheets (Google apps), and so forth.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Compared to Linux, Google OS will offer:
1. The Google brand name, which is instantly recognizable to millions of people that have never heard of Linux.
2. (Supposedly) An extremely fast system start-up time, better than many or maybe even most Linux distributions that offer X and a Window Manager.
3. Massive marketing muscle, something the Linux community lacks.
4. The resources to put tens of thousands of developer man-hours into making their product easy to use and visually pretty, something Microsoft has but Linux does not. (Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of beautiful UI
5. The negotiating power to get many OEMs to offer their OS pre-installed on PCs and to have those PCs displayed prominently at retail stores and websites.
Compared to Microsoft, Google OS will offer:
1. The Google brand name, which has a far more generally positive image for the public than Microsoft.
2. A faster start up time.
3. A free price.
With all of those factors in their corner, I still expect Google Chrome OS to end up with less of the total market than Apple, let alone Microsoft. But competition never hurts.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose we should feel sorry for every company that ever released something for pay that eventually went out of business because someone else was able to do it for free? Damn Microsoft for including TCP/IP in WIndows! They forced Trumpet Winsock out of business!
Where do we draw the line?
Re:More Bets against the American Worker (Score:3, Insightful)
Housing prices have not corrected themselves.
Look at California. Still listing those "$500,000" mobile units in Santa Barbara.
The issue can't be fixed until all those people who can't pay off their mortgages are physically OUT OF THOSE HOUSES.
Growing the economy can be done in three ways:
Finding/exploiting new physical resources
Increasing productivity
Moving liquid assets (people buying shit they can AFFORD)
Yes, "buying" shit with a credit card when you can't afford it outright is absolutely retarded, and I don't fucking consider that "buying".
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow! When I'm looking for insight into discussions on the Internet, straw men and ad hominem are the first places I look.
Thanks for settling the discussion on the merits of IE vs Netscape by (falsely, I might add) accusing the judge as being an ancient technophobe.
Seriously, the point of bringing up court rulings is not because the rulings ruled which browser was better (they didn't), but because they ruled that MS's actions where anti-competitive and monopolistic. That is evidence to the fact that IE didn't beat Netscape by simply being better.
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they caught on because people obviously care about different things than you do.
See, not many people care if they need to download a 30k executable or a 100k javascript. They also don't care if that executable can perform whatever they need done in 0.2 seconds instead of two seconds for the web app. And they definitely don't care that you think that it's almost parasitic. Really? Why should they care about anything else than getting the job done in the most convenient way?
They care that they can get things done that they doesn't do very often, without having to find, install and run a piece of software locally - and risk getting malware at the same time or slowing down their computers.
Web apps are convenient. The user doesn't have to bog down his computer with tons of applications that he doesn't use very often and he doesn't have to worry (to the same degree) about malware. He will always have the latest version and he can access it no matter if he is at an Internet cafe in Thailand, at a friend's house or home at his desktop.
You may not like it, but web based apps definitely have several advantages over traditional, local apps and they do make sense a lot of time for a lot of people. Especially simple tools that may not be used very often, but also Office Suites (if you want to access your documents from everywhere), translation software or other software that constantly needs updating of data.
Sure, they may not - from a purely technical standpoint - be the most efficient applications. They may use up more bandwidth and total resources than local apps, but as long as they smoothly enough and are simple enough to use, noone except for the most pedantic programmers will care or even notice. They will just notice that it's simpler and takes less effort for them than downloading and installing a local app.
Re:Hogwash (Score:1, Insightful)
yahoo
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Question (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares?
Buy a mac.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think conglomerations are going to roll over and just let Cloud computing manage their corporate sensitive information you're completely loony.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? Corporations do this all the time, it's called contracting a service.
Hell, I work for one of the largest companies in the world, and the powers that be recently decided it would be a good idea to contract all of our security to a firm in India.
If you think they would be skiddish about letting Microsoft or Google manage their data, you are pretty ignorant about the way Corporate America, and corporations globally, think and operate.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Insightful)
Who exactly benefits from mutually assured destruction?
The Users. We should all get big tubs of popcorn and watch Microsoft and Google duke it out.
Asymmetric warfare (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Google didn't identified anything, they just have enough cash to fund long-term such project. And is not a head-on assault on Microsoft grip on the OS market, but rather a typical asymmetric warfare operation. Any dollar Google pours into Chrome OS, even if it doesn't defeat Microsoft, it makes them hemorrhage maybe another $500-1,000. If Google can fund Chrome OS long enough the loses of Microsoft will become harder and harder to justify in front of their board and ultimately in front of their shareholders.
It's very similar, strategically, with the asymmetric warfare strategy facing the American troops in Afghanistan.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Insightful)
That's "progress"...
As hardware gets faster, software designers find new more inefficient ways to waste the extra capability of the hardware while dressing it up with buzzwords, fancy graphics and marketing.
"Cloud computing" is just one example, the prevalence of increasingly high level languages that seem to be getting progressively slower too, and the use of fancy graphical effect on interfaces that just detract form usability is another.
Incidentally, they are piggybacking on top of http because creating a new more efficient protocol would go one of two ways...
An open standards protocol, which microsoft would ignore and wouldn't see widespread use...
A proprietary protocol created by microsoft which would be resisted by many, cause dangerous lockin and possibly attract antitrust regulators again.