A few weeks have passed, and I have allowed myself plenty of time to absorb all critics, experts and soothsayer’s take on the announcement of Chrome OS.
Honesty, most of this chatter was so unbelievably polarizing, I had to stop and wonder if last year’s presidential campaign was still going on. Perhaps this adversion and resistance only signifies a shift in the OS paradigm is indeed on the horizon.
True, many other operating system have come and gone, all of which were heralded as The One to take down the mighty Windows. So what then makes this new challenge so different?
Clash of the Titans: Unlike its predecessors, Google has the talent, capital and built-in user base the others only dreamt of. Such clout and leverage positions them as a worthy adversary against Redmond’s reigning giant.
This Ain’t Your Daddy’s OS: True, Chrome OS will be designated for initial release on netbooks and not so much the desktops market. But considering the growth in mobile technologies and cloud computing recently, who will want desktop in the coming years?
Even today, many businesses are migrating to mobile platforms and even scrapping their workstation as mobile computing increases in power. Didn’t the phone companies originally scoff at cellular and VoIP technologies when they were first introduced? Perhaps history is about to school Windows in a similar fashion.
The AOL Factor: Remember when high speed service providers came on the scene and people began to realize that their beloved America Online was not in fact the internet itself, but a slow and lowly service provider? Once Chrome OS reveals its highly mobile, maintenance free, cloud native superiority; the Windows architecture will begin to appear as that old ‘desktop OS’ from the early days of dial up.
The Tale of Two Cities: While Redmond’s definition of relevance and innovation is Jerry Seinfeld eating churros and bullying vendors into accepting their proprietary brand, the Googleplex was planning a multi-front attack with Android, the Chrome browser, Voice, Wave and now Chrome OS. In fact, if you connect the dots between these technologies, I wouldn't be too surprised if Google acquired their own mobile network in the not too distant future.
So, is Chrome OS poised for take over? It all depends on whether Microsoft can do a major overhaul of their OS before Google’s release. But considering their commitment to Widows 7 over the next few years, Google might just have the early lead.
Comments
The interesting thing with Chrome OS is that it is all the compatible parts that are missing from Windows:
1) the portable Unix core operating system so that the system can run on any CPU
2) the OpenGL-compatible 3D window manager, so that the system can run on any GPU
3) the HTML 5 API so that the system can run any modern Web application
On Mac OS, you already have all 3 of the above for quite a while now. As much as it will take Google a couple of years to realize Chrome OS, Microsoft has not even started building a modern operating system and modern UI and modern browser.
If Apple did not have a portable core OS, they would have died in 2005 along with PowerPC. Instead they ported to Intel in 2005 and doubled the Mac user base, then to ARM in 2007 and doubled the OS X user base. Microsoft is depending on the technology industry to continue to make Windows-compatible IA32 systems with DirectX-compatible GPU's and IE-specific Web apps. Nobody is doing that anymore.
I think the biggest challenge to M$ would come from a strenghtened position of the OEM's. With a light OS that can be stored at a cheap on board flash-drive, OEM's might redefine
modularity and create slim M$-less thin client netbooks with premium add-on modules including harddrive, windows 7 preinstalled and license sold seperately as an option.
M$ is increasingly vulnerable because they desperately need the common perception of having above 90% desktop OS market share to keep their ecosystem healthy. If a big OEM like DELL or HP would relegate Windows from standart to an option and fairly charge real costs, this would be an enormous blow to M$ dominance. Having alternatives these OEM's can negotiate until it really hurts.
So even if we will not see Chrome OS or Moblin on many PC's, the pure existence of alternatives alone will cost Microsoft billions in revenues.
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