Good article. The problem I've found is that the marketing had for the
first few days drowned out the essential point(s) of this
announcement. Some reflection (like this) is now being done, which is
good.
On Jul 11, 2009, at 00:14, Victor Miclovich wrote:
An excerpt/article from Good Morning silicon valley: :) :). Have a
good read.... M$ is probably in big trouble!
The five scariest words in tech, as we’ve noted before, are “Google
has entered your market,” and Tuesday those words hung over
Microsoft headquarters as clearly as if the search sovereign had
hired a plane to sky-write the message above Redmond. The day began
with Google finally removing the beta label from its Apps
productivity suite, signaling to enterprise customers that it should
be regarded as a mature, cloud-based alternative to Microsoft
Office. And the day ended with Google announcing an offensive long
the subject of rumors and predictions, a strike at Microsoft’s core
franchise, the Windows operating system.
As outlined by Google, its Chrome OS is not so much a direct assault
on Windows as a flanking maneuver, an effort to redefine “operating
system” and “desktop” for an age of Web-oriented computing. Using
the Chrome browser in a new windowing system on top of a Linux
kernel, the open-source OS will run on both x86 and ARM chips and
will initially show up on netbooks in the second half of 2010. The
application platform will be the Web itself, allowing developers to
create apps just as they do for any standards-compliant browser.
“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome
OS,” said company execs Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson in a blog
post. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start
up and get you onto the Web in a few seconds. The user interface is
minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience
takes place on the Web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser,
we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the
underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have
to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just
work.”
Many of those who had been anticipating a Google grab for the
desktop figured the vehicle would be Android, an OS created with
mobile phones in mind but also adaptable for netbooks. But Google’s
post says these are two different animals: “Android was designed
from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones
to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for
people who spend most of their time on the Web, and is being
designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size
desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and
Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the
benefit of everyone, including Google.”
For the moment, the air is full of questions. Are consumers willing
to embrace cloud-computing? Will there be provisions for offline use
and storage? What about user interface, peripheral support, non-Web
applications? What’s the potential effect on Google’s relationship
with Apple? How about the antitrust implications? Will Google follow
through with intensity, or will it end up just dabbling? The list
goes on. The air, at least in the blogosphere, is also full of
excitement, a Colosseum-crowd eagerness to see a full-on OS battle
with the prospect of the current and unloved champion getting
bloodied.
So is Microsoft shaking over a new challenger in this arena? Not
likely. There’s many a mile between press release and product, and
potholes aplenty. As some Redmond spokesman is likely to contend any
moment now, while cloud computing and Web-based apps will become
increasingly important, there remain among businesses and consumers
strong reasons to have a heavy-duty OS on a local machine. Windows 7
will be rolling out soon, and the early notices give the company
reason to hope for a favorable reception. Microsoft is expected to
confirm its release to manufacturing as early as Monday at its
annual Worldwide Partner Conference, and there may also be more
evidence that Microsoft, too, is trying to reconceptualize the
browser and the OS.
And there better be some serious R&D money flowing in that
direction, because while Microsoft may keep its hold on the desktop,
the desktop as currently defined will play an increasingly smaller
role in our broader computing and networking environment. We may
well need one machine in the house with an OS complex enough to
handle big jobs or specialized tasks or particular hardware, but the
growth is going to be in all those other screens that we’ll carry on
our person or in a briefcase or from room to room, devices that
don’t need to run Photoshop or edit video, devices that just need to
be able to talk to the Web and to each other. Behemoth that it is,
Microsoft needs to be already well into the process of adjusting
course for this or it’ll end up still cranking out big heavy gas-
guzzlers after the demand has moved on to less expensive, more
efficient compacts.
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