Google Chrome OS
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The clash of the titans. War! Fight! It’s fun to read what has been written about the GoogleOS. Clearly this is getting the juices flowing. Nothing sells newspaper (or online ads, I guess) like a good old conflict. And who better to pit against each other than the Evil Monster Microsoft (seriously?) against the “do no evil” Google.
But of course that’s missing the point. Google isn’t writing a new OS. They didn’t do that with Android, either. They are using the existing Linux kernel. They are using tons of existing user space code that the open source community has worked on for 20+ years and that the Linux vendors have perfected over the last 15 years (and that Ubuntu has taken a free ride on for… wait, I digress).
So what Google really is doing is that it is putting its well proven brand and marketing muscle behind something that mostly exists. And then it’s using its not-quite-so-proven productization muscle (hey, Gmail is no longer in beta after umpteen years) to shape the very flexible Linux OS to its liking.
More focus on web. Less focus on native apps. More focus on binding the user to a monopoly (sounds familiar?), less focus on freedom and choice. We’ve seen this play out. Many times.
What is interesting is that with Moblin (and all the Linux OSVs who have announced Moblin compliant versions of their Linux OS) there is a pretty interesting contender just about to go product – about a year ahead of Google’s Chrome OS. So is Google actually hurting Linux here with its “quick – don’t look – we’ll do something even better!” announcement? I wonder. The timing is sure odd. Long before they have anything to show for, just making sure that no other standard emerges?
Well, time will tell. Moblin needs to succeed on its own merit – and it has plenty of time to do so. And a year from now we’ll know more about Google’s ability to create a production quality OS for a broad set of hardware platforms. In the mean time I’m excited about all the opportunities.
Oh, you may have noticed that I didn’t talk about Microsoft Windows 7 and Apple OS X in this post. That’s right – those target different markets (I know, MS dreams of Windows 7 for Netbooks – but at a 20% price premium compared to a free OS… that will be a tough sell). I don’t think that Google Chrome OS (or Moblin, for that matter) will have a chance against W7 and OSX on full fledged notebooks, desktops and workstations. And I don’t think that either is trying to do that. On the other hand I think that there’s plenty of space for a free OS on limited capability. And that’s where Google’s Chrome OS is indeed competing with Moblin, Google’s Android and other Linux based offerings.
Sometimes Linux world need to get rid of “modus operande” motto. Look those useless options for windowing systems. Sometimes one big chef integrates, manages and combines the right choices. As long as google announced that the OS will be open source, we have a chance to go with.
I found very realistic Google’s marketing ideas. They don’t try to get some more money from nothing they give. You click or not and they drive the adsense. Cool then. Go Google :)
I wonder what’s the competitive advantage of a distro that (apparently) differentiates itself by running the browser in “kiosk mode” as the only application?-)
Yeah but isn’t it interesting that msft came out with bing (a real search contender) then google came out with vapor OS?
I’ve seen that mentioned a few times. I don’t buy it.
Google has an OS out there (Android) that is failing on Netbooks, yet people want to put it on Netbooks. Google believes there’s a market
there, so they redesign what they have around Chrome and announce it.
Don’t think search wars play a role here…
Chrome OS would be very competitive on Microsoft operating systems. I was thinking that one day, Google would launch an Operating system that would complete with Windows XP or Vista. Google and Microsoft would compete head to head now that Microsft launched its Bing search engine.
with the release of Google Chrome and Microsoft Bing search engine, one would expect that there would be a very stiff competition between Google and Microsoft.