Comments on: Analyzing Google's Chrome OS strategy

The forthcoming Chrome OS is technically straightforward, but why Google is doing an OS in the first place is a little less obvious.

[vewi5353]

I completely have no problem for Google to make money from my computer time. That is my choice and not like I will be hostage of the disgusting Microsoft forever. Better yet, with a new choice of OS, that will keep the morons in Microsoft a bit more humble. They won't dear to ask their customer to adapt to their ways. Google OS (or any non-Window OS), I like it just for the sound of it.

I completely agree!!

But hey it's refreshing seeing that a mega-company is looking at the future and actually investing in it. Today we may see it as far fetched..in a year time we may see it as a disappointing product but in 3-5 years, when it has been developed well, we will accept it as a life working environment and soon it will become the norm.

That's how technology evolves, always. Just look at the Internet in general.

[PFYC]

"Existing operating systems such as Windows support a far wider variety of programming languages and provide far more services than Chrome OS will, but Chrome will probably be plenty good enough for netbooks."

Microsoft is hobbled by the requirement to support its legacy APIs, a burden that gets worse with every release, especially given their tendency to put incompatibilities in as they go. A brand-new OS with a relatively clean slate might be able to provide all the functionality most people need with a lot less overhead. If the OS is any good, the programming languages will follow. We'll have to see.

[CrashPad63]

You see right there is the double speak coming. MS better not drop support, and in the next breath, condemned for being sddled with that very support.
Well to burst your bubble, MS is working on this very same thing for release.

[Regensburger]

What a load of rhetorical crap. Where does the article or the comment say "MS better not drop support"?

[thofts]

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Apple can't keep up with the sales demand for their 13" MacBook Pros. It's not a netbook ,but a full fledged computer that has *********** and functionality.

[darkxeno]

That's due to its the best price point for the hardware and Apple design.
No this is not a flame I myself have been looking at the 13" MacBook for myself.

[mmarsula]

("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," Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, said in the blog post.)

Why does Mr. Glaskowsky narrow ChromeOS to just netbooks and then proceed to criticize Google's 'strategy of netbooks' because of his personal distaste of them when it isn't quite their strategy? I don't like to use the term too much, but this is mostly FUD.

[dymaxion1]

Look to the future. I cannot believe how narrow minded the CNET writers are. If it doesn't work like windows, cost a lot of money like windows it must be doomed to failure. I would like to see a few new OS's on the market so the computer field can become innovative again.

[forever4now]

I agree.

Look at all the excitement & innovation in the web browser space these days.

Look at all the excitement & innovation in the smartphone space these days.

The same should be true for desktop OSes. I understand that OS X & Ubuntu are already compelling alternatives to Windows (I use Ubuntu as my primary OS). but I still think it is great that Google is getting involved, to bring their web perspective & innovative spirit to desktop OSes. Choice is good!

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

I would too! And in my professional life, I'm trying to make it happen. (This blog is not my professional life. :-)

But Chrome OS, at least in its first iteration, isn't novel; it isn't the next big thing. It's the old thin-client concept with a new label on it.

We rejected it before, and we'll reject it again.

If Google decides to evolve Chrome into a truly new and fully functional OS, that'll be great. I gave them the benefit of the doubt in the article, but having slept on it, I'm less optimistic now. I'm not sure why Google would want to climb what amounts to a multi-billion-dollar learning curve. How would it profit from that work in the long run?

I'll keep thinking about it, though.

[dynojunkee]

I think you should retitle this article to Google's Chrome OS 'dissected', instead of using the word 'explained.' As you merely share your opinion and predictions in this article and hardly share any facts from Google themselves.

[dynojunkee]

Now that I think of it dissected might not be the right word either. However this article has nothing to do with Google's strategy versus how unsuccesful you believe this strategy will be.

What happen to unbiased articles?

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

The unbiased articles are the ones written by CNET reporters over in the news section. This is the CNET Blog Network. If I didn't have relevant experience and opinions, they wouldn't have asked me to contribute. :-)

[WindFarmer808]

All the netbook naysayers are trying to utilize a hammer to drive a screw. They are not for hard core computing. They are for simple tasks and web browsing.

Now that I have that out of the way will you please tell me where in the Chrome browser are the embedded adds? Where in that incredibly efficient layout am I losing precious real estate for additional adds? The answer is nowhere they don't exist. As such i don't think that a Chrome OS will be any less streamlined or any more obtrusive.

What Google is trying to do here is create a means for more people to get onto a computer for all the tasks the vast majority of consumer computer users actually do on a computer. They want to increase the total internet user base. Their model is not based on obtrusively inserting adds anywhere they can (isn't that why Google so complete trounced its competition?) it is by the shear volume of people seeing the adds they have out there. They realize that 9.9 times out of 10 an on-line user surfing the internets will see a Google add.

As you pointed out they are a profit seeking entity, to increase profits they need to increase internet usage. To increase usage they need to increase utility for existing users so they spend more time on-line looking at those adds, and increase the total number of users of the internet.

To that end Google is not trying to create this browser for technophiles and hardcore programmers it is creating it for everyone else. It makes perfect sense to put this on a netbook which due to cost and portability is the internet usage device for "everyone else".

Based on these reasons I think that you have completely missed the point of this OS.

[dskarjune]

I agree with WindFarmer that Glaskowsky has missed the point of the Chrome browser, Chrome OS, and netbooks. This is not something that supplants traditional client computing--this is optimizing for working on the 'Net and in the Cloud. It's intended as forward-looking disruptive technology. Google makes long bets, not short ones, and they don't cut corners.

For example, Android may have a small market share and apps market compared to iPhone, but Android is plain smarter not glossier. The first Android system had a seamless Cut-Copy-Paste function throughout...iPhone just caught up. Android can maintain multiple apps in state and in processing in the background for a multi-tasking experience. The goal is a better mobile platform, not a shot at some iPhone killer.

The same is true of this Google Chrome OS gambit. What would a futuristic cloudbook be? Wait and see.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

I think you're both missing the point that if Google is going to make money from this work, it's going to have to find new ways to insert ads and make more money from people using Chrome OS-based computers. A Google browser or a Google computer per se isn't going to get people to spend more time looking at Google ads.

[dskarjune]

We're not missing your point, Peter, we are countering it directly. The Chrome browser does not insert Google ads into anything, nor does the Android system on the G1 phone insert ads into anything. Google is beyond the scenario you are posing. Old School Microsoft economics demands money upfront with licenses. New School Web 2.0 economics uses network effects as a driver to later profits--it's not about proliferating ads upfront as a strategy--see Amy Shuen's Web 2.0 book. Yes, Google search delivers ads, but look at the full Google portfolio. What ads are on an iGoogle home page? No direct ads, just Google Gadgets delivering whatever content you choose...but it's via a Google platform and network. They have no problem picking up the tab somewhere else in the network.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Okay, fine, where exactly WILL Google "pick up the tab" without giving people more opportunities to click on targeted ads on a Chrome OS machine vs. some other kind of machine?

I mean, seriously, your argument sound like that old Internet meme:

1) Develop a new OS.
2) ???
3) Profit!

[dynojunkee]

Glaskowsky, I think you're missing the point!! While Google Chrome OS will surely have to find a non-invasive way to display ads as often as possible I am confident it will be easy for them. Google Ads are not annoying, and that's the bottom line. And as time progesses they will continue to relate more toward your preferences.

Either way, if we forget about the entire fact it's Google's Chrome "Operating System" and pay more attention to the applications that they will bring to the internet. How can you not be excited about that? Not only will the applications run on Google's OS, but they will run on others as well. Imagine that. Here's an exerpt from the Official Google Blog and it's article "Introducing Google Chrome OS."

"All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform."

If Google were to scrap this project, they would post-pone the future of the internet and what it's bound to become. There is no need for this. Google will evolve, Microsoft will evolve and the future will get closer.

Why so scared?

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

dynojunkee, why do you believe anyone is waiting for Chrome OS to develop new applications? Chrome OS doesn't have any capabilities that {Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer} doesn't have on {Windows, Mac OS X, Linux}.

In fact, the _problem_ with any browser is that it's very difficult to make a sophisticated Web app that runs on multiple browsers. So for the most part, Chrome apps will be Chrome-specific apps. And similarly, Web apps for large-display systems suffer when run on small screens.

If Chrome OS Web apps are the only answer, you're asking the wrong question.

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[lopez3000]

Hello, i commented in another article. Netbooks are the ideal place to enter the market, Mr Glaskowski, netbooks sales are skyrocketing worldwide, i have already told you that, just because you are a computer expert and you need an allmighty super computer doesnt mean that normal people in fact love netbooks, and need to check their email and surf the web. It is the perfect place to get into the market.

Please check how newtbooks sales has increased, and try to be impartial, for God's sake

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

What's increased is the sales of small notebooks. Not netbooks. Netbooks were tried and trashed in the space of about six months of last year. Go to any retail store that carries netbooks and you'll find Windows XP on them, not Linux, and they'll come with hard disks, not flash drives, and they'll be used to run all the same Windows software that people run on any other kind of notebook.

That's what I explained in my earlier post, "The Netbook is dead! Long live the notebook!":

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10145482-23.html

I'm as impartial as the truth allows.

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[lopez3000]

"And then most of those people will return those machines, or give them to their ungrateful children, or just toss them onto a shelf to gather dust, and they won't buy more of the same"

Great analysis!, apocalypsis for anything that is not Microsoft

[melee70]

Another out of date 20th century pundit speaking out of his proverbial butt. People said for a long time that the PDA was a niche tool that would never be mass market. People like this idiot said for many years that laptop computers in general would never be good enough to run real applications and then when laptops could they said that they would never be cheap enough for everyone to buy. Wrong Wrong Wrong.

Toyota has been building cars for decades and they couldnt see how important the Prius would be to their company for the same reason this idiot can't see how important Chrome OS could be. They are backward looking idiots wearing MS blinders. Wake up. The days of MS domination are numbered.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

But Chrome OS doesn't give us anything we don't have already. So how's it going to help?

Anyway, I think if you look through my earlier posts you'll see I'm a neophile myself. I just expect new things to be NEW, and to be an improvement in some way over what we have already.

[dynojunkee]

Glaskowsky, to say Google Chrome OS doesn't give us anything we don't already have is as arrogant as anyone could possibly be!

Haha, you have me rolling on the floor.

I can not wait until Google Chrome OS is released because I suppose then will be the only time that you will realize you're predictions are absurd and out this world. You're speaking as if Google has never done a thing to revolutionize the way people use the internet.

Hahaha.

[scottlebus]

I do agree with some aspects of the article, however I think the writer as well as other writers I have recently read on this topic ignores a very major issue. The major issue is that most people are very unhappy with windows! Much different than comparing ie to chrome. IE works fairly well without many problems, so although I like chrome much more there really is not that much of a difference for most users, so if it ain't broke don't fix it. This is not the case with Windows! Every person that I know has had major problems from blue screens to incompatibility with hardware to spending time and money for upgrades that actually make things worse. Also the annoying spyware, malware, virus protection subscriptions that screw things up as well as bankrupt the average user. The only reason microsoft has not changed is because they have not had to. They have a virtual cash cow monopoly. Yes mac has made some inroads, but unfortunately it is still too expensive for the masses and with all the promise of linux I don't see it being sold at Best Buy. Depending on how google makes this and markets it will depend on their penetration. I personally think it will take over because most people want computers that turn on like a television not like an existing pc with its boot time and its annoying microsoft jingle. They also don't want all the wasteful trial subscriptions and dealing with upgrades all the time. They don't want expensive ms word and excel, which most users use less than 5% of their capabilities. Frankly I am surprised that apple has not exploited this more with marketing their low cost cube. I am sure they will create a larger ipod touch which will be a hybrid between a netbook and an ipod.

[razipix]

Google OS, if its clever, which it is, will provide the option to run Win or Mac OS based applications as well if installed along with Win or Mac. In that case, it will do a better job than Virtual OS from MS. I am counting on Google to increase the speed of the OS in general and reduce registry errors so it boots fast, it works fast, shuts down fast.

[dynojunkee]

They did promise the boot up in seconds! At least, if I'm not mistaking I saw that mentioned somewhere, even if it's not a promise. I trust that Google will surprise.

[Gloster27]

Google (and their business model) is different from Microsoft. Google is a relatively new company (compared to MSFT, Yahoo, etc). Google entered a somewhat well-established market, and dominated it. The only way for them to succeed (in search, as well as any other endeavor) is to offer the best-in-class product. Microsoft owns the OS market for now. And they don?t care about making it the best in class. Their model is ? lets sell stuff, and then we?ll figure the way to make it perfect (which, no offense to MSFT, never happens). Whereas Google can?t afford that luxury, simply because they don?t have any presence in the OS market. So the only way for them to succeed is to create something extraordinary.

And knowing them, they probably will.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

In order, your sentences are:

True, half-true, false, true, true, false, false, true, true, and doubtful. Google people aren't that much better than Microsoft or Apple people.

[freeimprov]

"but it can learn from how these things are done in existing operating systems, and possibly even borrow much of the code directly from Linux".

Um, ChromeOS IS Linux. It's a gui running on a Linux kernel. You're supposed to be a technology analyst - try doing some technology analysis before writing! Failing to do even minimal research casts a shadow on everything else you write.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Linux kernel, maybe, but how much else? Google hasn't said. The kernel isn't the operating system.

[Pishkado]

"A browser already has most of the key elements of any OS: application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow application software to display content and accept user input, store and retrieve data from mass storage, communicate over the Internet, and so on." This is a major oversimplification, typical of folks who have used but never worked inside an OS, that ignores the main function of an operating system: managing resources. That's where the hard stuff lives. Granted, starting with Linux gets Google over some hurdles in that area, but to say that a browser has it? No way.

[kast5089]

I was going to say the same thing. A browser has none of these things without an OS. I really don't know what this guy is talking about, but it clearly isn't an operating system. And it isn't like you can cut and paste Linux kernel code into browser code. I'm amazed at how undereducated the mainstream tech press is on this issue.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

Well, that's probably where I should have mentioned the Linux kernel aspect of the announcement, but I still don't know what that really means.

[WillNO]

"Turning the Chrome browser into the Chrome OS is technically straightforward, though of course it'll take a lot of work. A browser already has most of the key elements of any OS"

I don't know what Mr. Glaskowsky's background it, but the above statement suggests that either he has never had the basic undergraduate Operating Systems course, or he didn't pay much attention in class. Either way, he's clearly over his head in this area and might be best served to change the topic to something he is qualified to discuss.

[abuleera]

I think netbook makers got it wrong. They should have concentrated on smaller, more portable sizes, like the original Psion Netbook, with relatively basic functions - word processing, spreadsheeting, database, diary, emails, internet browsing etc - not the whole works. Instead, the offerings were never quite small enough, and have been growing in size, weight (and price) over the last year. There are many occasions when I don't want to drag a laptop everywhere, just on the offchance I might need it. But I'd be happy to take a Psion Netbook sized machine to usefully fill in time when waiting for planes, trains, buses, the wife or daughter, etc.. If Sony can put the necessary computing power in a PSP, surely someone could do it with a useable two thirds size keyboard, a screen 4 or 5 times as big as an iPod touch, some useful software, and a full day's battery power - or even offer the alternative of widely available AA cells?

[freeimprov]

You can get all the functionality you said is needed via Google apps. Most of the time, I find Google Docs even MORE useful than desktop apps - I don't need complex features, but do need easy file sharing. Google Docs has the stuff I need and doesn't have what I don't need. This is what makes ChromeOS on Netbooks different - and more viable - than previous attempts to break the MS monopoly.

Pretty much every "killer" app of the 21st century has been a web app, not a desktop app. MS has either bought out or crushed nearly every interesting non-MS desktop app, leaving only niche products like Photoshop unmolested. The only way to create something new without MS screwing with you is on the net. After while, there's not that much on the traditional desktop that matters anymore, if you don't need a niche app or all the power of MS Office.

[rustyspark]

I liked this article - though there is some clear failed analysis as others have pointed out. One more bug I have to pick is regarding the following.

"Microsoft, for example, makes money mostly by selling software (and a few hardware products) to computer users. "
vs
"Google makes money by displaying ads on a small part of the display while people view Internet content on the rest."

I think that this statement mis-understands the product that Google is producing, and who their customer is. Google's business is "Information" and advertising revenue is only one potential income stream. Google users are the product, and they sell it to interested companies who would are looking for particular markets. This is done through Google search, goog411, youtube, and soon to be Google voice. With Gmail, Gdocs, android, and soon google voice, the depth of information that they can gather and aggregate to provide to marketers gets more complex and valuable. Now imagine the depth of data, and the kinds of associations that they can dredge up from the users behavior if they have access to all data within the whole system. They will be able to tell you not only how many people searched for "iPhone", but also how long those customers spend on Facebook, myspace, CNN, and in yahoo mail.

I believe the writer missed this analysis, and because of that fails to see the real value statement for Google. This is not some insidious plan, it is just how they run the business, and they will give away any of their software "products" that help to seed the field in order to harvest the wealth of user activity information.

[Peter N. Glaskowsky]

I think you underestimate the portion of Google's revenue that comes from ads, and overestimate the value of "user activity information". The only legitimate way I see to make money from user activity is to turn it into targeted ads.

[vikinzer]

Why does no one on this site see the raw potential of this product. They are all talking about how it will do against Linux or Mac. Will it really be worth using? Blah Blah Blah. They don't really need to build a full blown desktop OS replacement. They just don't. They have to build a system that has a sustainable niche, and it can be minimally sustainable, and have that system offer some sort of experience that is superior to the current offerings. It can be lacking in several departments and still "succeed". All it really needs to do to "suceed" for Google is to push the other players into developing their products to match whatever functionality Google offers. It worked with the browser. Chrome came out and BOOM Mozilla suddenly cared about performance when they had been leeking memory and performance like a pasta strainer leaks starchy water for more than a full point release. Google apps suddenly feel much more responsive when people upgrade. Even the people not technically adept enough to know about Chrome and it's speed advantage. Mozilla didn't want to lag behind long enough for the tech friends to convince the non tech users they had finally dragged kicking and screaming away from Microsoft.

Ubuntu is now moving on a big push to get Android apps running on their platform, boot times are shrinking all the time, and performance is at the forefront of development again. Google has said their OS will be open source. So whatever they bring to the table you know the other players are going to implement it in their distros, or work to make their products competitive with it. What is the end result? You guessed it Google gets to drive development of the major platforms by being competitive, and by driving development they get to have platforms their products run well on. This move is so not actually about the system they are deploying, and I can't figure out why no one else is talking about that angle.

[dskarjune]

Exactly! That's why Mark Shuttleworth has never worried about a supposed ?goobuntu? project inside the "Do No Evil" empire, and his response to the Chrome O.S. announcement was ?Google has a reasonable stab at redefining the desktop.? He gets it, admires the direction, understands it as a potential multiplier for Ubuntu, and will probably direct Canonical to take a stab at the cloud as well.