Google announces new OS to compete with Microsoft
The New York Times this morning has an insightful article about Google’s new Chrome Operating System (now more than a browser!). Google is thinking that a netbook optimized OS will be successful for them, and that’s what Chrome is. The browser will be the OS, the OS will be the browser.
Well worth reading – the key issue with this whole move into operating systems is well stated by the reporter – “But while Google has deep pockets and a vast reach, it is in for a difficult battle when it comes to challenging Microsoft in the operating system market. Many companies have tried this over the years, with little success.”
Big move by Google. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out. To date, Android (despite early and considerable hype) isn’t exactly taking the mobile marketplace by storm. Google is facing Win7 and possibly some sort of Mac tablet/netbook as well as other linux distributions. I haven’t run Win7 on a netbook yet, but it’s AWESOME in Fusion on my Macbook Pro, so I expect it’ll perform amazingly well on netbook hardware. (Win7 is faster than XP Pro was in my virtual machine)
I think that Win7 is really going to surprise a lot of people – it’s got all the advantages of Vista, but the speed is what is most impressive. The other killer feature is that this OS speed is combined with true and fast universal search. The reason I live in Fusion instead of the Mac natively is because the built in search in Vista/Win7 is so excellent. Spotlight on the Mac was first to market but hasn’t improved much since in my opinion. For a couple of years, I’ve opened all my applications by searching for them – ie “Word” instead of fumbling around in Programs, Microsoft Office, etc…
Watch here at Varvid.com next week for video coverage of Win7 from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. We think that Win7 is the biggest story of the coming year for Solution Providers, so we’re focusing on it at WPC. In our opinion, Win7 is ready for primetime today - and it’s still a release candidate…
Update – looks like we’re not the only people who see this OS the same way – Ed Molzen over at ChannelWeb says much the same…
Vlad Mazek
I have a somewhat less enthusiastic view of what’s going to happen next week. Microsoft will use it’s Partner Conference to yet again send the message to everyone in the audience that their only purpose is to fill the gaps Microsoft has not closed in on yet and that they will leave no battle without a peon, no matter how insignificant.
Microsoft has been on the losing end (and deep, deep in the red) of so many battles over the past decade but they keep on pushing forward. Sounds like a winning recipe, but as of late they just haven’t had a win. I’m pretty sure Windows 7 won’t be it and I’m sure Chrome won’t be either.
We live in a very interesting time. The more choices there are, the less relevance any given product happens to have. Think about IM, Email or Web for example. I remember HAVING to download Trillian if I wanted to have a stable online presence. I remember not being able to function outside of Outlook. I also remember when I had to download Netscape/Firefox just to get to a functional web page. And I had to write software to those unique solutions because each side could afford to publish crappy, non-standardized, our-way-or-the-highway software.
These days, not so much.
You can see as much on the web. There is far less posturing and chest pounding among the big software companies.
-Vlad