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."
Malodorous Headline (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [gnu.org] 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
Chrome OS + Cloud = New Google (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Anticompetative behaviour (Score:1, Interesting)
So will Chrome OS be required to support IE?
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:1, Interesting)
Apple is both constrained and enhanced by hardware. But you can't really make a true apples to apples comparison because of this. If google can pull off an OS approaching OS X's functionality/usability, and Linux's hardware/platform flexibility, they'll have something Apple doesn't. Google is also a "hip" name as well as a trusted name. People see Google as a technology leader and even non programmers see their developers as forward thinkers. This will all be a wildcard, but I think in favor of Google. I may not switch from my RHEL and CentOS installations, but others very well may. Penetrate the new netbook market, get businesses familiar with it, and expand. IBM and MS both started with businesses, the netbook is the foot in the door at least. Make netbooks a pleasure to manage as a fleet with Satellite/Spacewalk/RHN and Kickstart/FlashStart/Jumpstart/Roboinst type management tools and businesses may want to see that on their desktops as well. OpenOffice is rapidly becoming a fully functional replacement for MS Office, businesses stand to save a ton of money switching to it- and many already use Firefox. While those two alone won't a conversion make, they certainly are two major pieces of the puzzle. As Adobe and others get on board, Linux becomes a pretty viable solution.
Cloud Computing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is really becoming absurd (Score:2, Interesting)
Can you tell me what the hell is wrong with these people? I recently installed Windows 7 64bit and figured there is no 64bit flash for Windows. It makes IE 64bit pretty useless. Adobe gave up all things in hand to code a 64bit plugin on that anarchic compatibility hell (compare to OS X and Windows) and it somehow works and yet they manage to put Adobe to some unrelated discussion with falsified information.
Wonder if it has some deeper reason like some dirty PR campaign.
Re:Hogwash (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My Bet (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Malodorous Headline (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Hardware support is essentially a question of OS market share!
Sad but true.
As Firefox has gained market share the support suddenly appeared and you are starting to see the same thing happening with OSX.
You can see that from the number of websites which now support Firefox, a couple of years ago at least 60% of websites I visited required IE, now there are hardly any!
Even those websites that require IE are almost all stuck on "IE 6" - which by itself says a lot about the website support!
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple all but owns the high-end consumer market, with reports of up to 90% market share for computers selling for $1000+. Incidentally, this is the only market segment Apple is trying to go after, and they're doing a great job of it. They may not look like much, but that's because their goal is maintaining profit margins, not world domination.
When you add in the competitive effects Apple's designs have had on hardware manufacturers and on Microsoft's OS design, it is clear that Apple has done far more than dent the market.
Re:Anticompetative behaviour (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:My Bet (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and stop trolling message boards with your misinformation.
Right back at you. Perhaps you've heard of Sarbanes Oxley (that's the one that killed the IPO market, among its other wastes)? Or the Greenspan housing bubble? FASB mark-to-market requirements? Taxing speculation at far lower rates than income? Under Bush, the financial sector incurred ~40,000 new regulations.
There's a strong case that the sector was *misregulated*, but *deregulated* is patently absurd. Remember how another Enron was going to be prevented by SarBox? That was the one where preposterous financial instruments, pass-the-potato games and lack of transparent auditing/rating cause a bunch of people to lose their shirts. Oh, wait.
From the evidence presented, I conclude Government is incapable of effectively regulating the financial markets. The Pricing Mechanism does at least as well and is far less expensive.
Re:Hogwash (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not so sure if many of Microsoft tools would survive the death of Windows. There are some things (Internet Explorer, for Example) that survive (I think) simply by default. Obviously if Windows tanked IE would be gone. Their next big product, Office and the programs that are big time associated with it like Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint Server would have to undergo a really really major overhaul to make them work as they are supposed to outside of a Windows/Active Directory environment. Yeah, you can set up Exchange to POP Mail or use Web Access but I don't see the use of buying Exchange to use in this fashion.
ASP.NET, Visual Studio, and SQL Server. Hmmm. It is really hard to say if these things would survive. On one hand Visual Studio and .Net is probably the easiest thing to use to begin programming and getting something that looks cool. I personally also think it is the easiest platform/IDE for a beginning/low end programmer to quickly cobbling together some internal, database applications for a business. Again though...I'm not sure how well .Net Web applications would work without IIS Web Servers. No Windows, No IIS, and their development platform might fold up rather quickly, too.
At this point, if these things all folded or ended up with a heavily diminished market share Microsoft would be in trouble. They have tons of other little pieces of software and some hardware (Mice or whatever) but not enough to really be considered a major player. Since the things I mentioned for the most rely heavily on Windows, I'd say that if Windows failed Microsoft would fail.
Re:More Bets against the American Worker (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Slow down, cowboy (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [nytimes.com] [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 [hitslink.com] [Rounded]
XP 73%
Vista 18%
OSX 10.5 3%
Linux 1%
OSX 10.4 1%
W2K 1%
Win 7 1%
Browser Version Market Share [hitslink.com]
IE 6 27%
IE 7 23%
FFOX 3 16%
IE 8 12%
FFOX 3.5 5%
Chrome 2%
Safari 2%
Country Level Weighting [hitslink.com]
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
When you're on a slim budget and you need to major upgrades, the price difference between a Mac and a low-end HP or Dell box makes the difference. Plus retraining costs, plus issues like software, I'm afraid that in a lot of organizations, for better or for worse, Windows has the upper hand. Is it right? No. Is it fair? No. Is it even really true? No, not really, OSX and the free *nixes offer a lot of comparable tools, but like I said "superior" is completely subjective.
I've given, from my needs and experience, why I don't partcularly find OSX all that superior to Windows. Malware is certainly an issue, but at least in a corporate environment on an Active Directory domain, if you have things properly locked down, there shouldn't be very much capability for ordinary users to install malware. The organization I administer has AV software on all the workstations, but because my workstation policies are pretty damned austere, I've yet to have any of them become infected with anything more severe than a nasty cookie or two.
And that leads to the next thing. For a lot of what I do, there's simply no really all-around replacement for AD Group Policies. Dropping in Macs or *nix boxes would make my life significantly more difficult, I'm afraid. Yet again, this is an example of the subject nature of "superior". Is OSX a superior desktop OS, on a number of points I'd probably concede, but start talking about managing large networks of dozens or hundreds of workstations, then Windows (despite the insane costs) is clearly the superior platform.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure... But PC's have a long longevity these days too.
My dad has a Dell Inspiron 8000 which was bought in 2000 or so. A few minor hardware upgrades he did. He loves it because the screen is 1600x1200.... Try finding such a resolution on one of the laptops of today.
My wifes computers (which is our primary home computer) is from fall 2003. It is still working, still perfectly adequate. (Okay, this one got a few minor upgrades too...)
Between 01/2005 and 01/2007, my primary laptop was a second hand P-III 600MHz... It had already served a good 4 years, as far as I know. It stayed with me for another two, when it physically started to fall apart. The electronics were still okay, but the plastic broke everywhere.
Compare that to my iBook G3 600MHz.... Bought it in 12/2001... Broken 06/2005. I treated that laptop like my firstborn! That's a mere 4 and a half years. Pretty much all my PCs have done longer service than that.
Re:Entirely Net-Based? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have too many computers and virtual machines I have access to... That's why I like gmail.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Funny. I am typing this on a six year old no-name box that I got already one year obsolete from Tiger Direct for $500 and I have the same problem.
Re:Hogwash (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Interesting)
You've obviously never tried supporting the deployment of a software application.
In the early 90s, I worked for an organization trying to develop a software supported distributed collaboration system -- the kind of thing that's dirt simple these days. We had maybe sixty or seventy people in the group, distributed all over the country, usually one per location. And those locations weren't Chicago and New York, they were more often places like Flagstaff and Tuskegee. The solution: have a guy fly out on the plane to install the software and train the user. CGI was brand new at the time. If we'd been doing it five years later, it would have been way cheaper and easier, although somewhat more crude looking.
In the late 90s and early 00s, I was involved in developing a successful vertical market app. Although profitable, the 80/20 rule applied in spades. Most of the customers we lost money on. The reason: the support costs of installing and maintaining the database. You can't let customers lose their data, period. Basically there was a minimum sized profitable customer, but we needed (for political reasons) to support the entire range of customer sizes. If we'd been doing it five years later, we could have packaged it as a web application for the little guys but we didn't have the web GIS capabilities in 1999.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Interesting)
That may be true, but law != fact. Too, and I know I'm simplifying this far, far too much, but anyone that USED the 2 browsers at the time realized Netscape was going out of its way to suck. IE was genuinely better in terms of speed and render quality. That seesawed back and forth a bit, but overall, IE really was quite a bit better.
Then, when competition was no more, it languished and sucked more each release, where it continues to stay. I don't know if they can pull it out this time with Chrome, Opera, hell, even Safari is better.
Re:Hogwash (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think they needed to be broken up they needed 2 things removed:
1) Their right to determine how their OS was used
2) Their freedom to price. That is require them to charge all OEMs the same price.