Shiny Like Chrome
This Google news is intriguing. First there was Chrome the browser: clearly aimed at freeing them from Internet Explorer’s crotchety old ways and Firefox’s independent whims. And now there is Chrome the OS: game over for Windows WTF OMG ROFL and so forth. That’s some bold intent on show from Google. As an Apple running Google user, I must say it’s exactly what I’ve wanted them to do for years.
I’m a firm believer in the notion that the great majority of people scarcely run local applications any more. The browser, just like Google said when introducing Chrome, to most intents and purposes is the OS. Google is already at the vanguard of that movement, taking on Microsoft Office at its weakest points with Google Docs, namely collaboration and price, and Gmail is a pretty solid web app for anyone used to Hotmail or basic use of Outlook. Hint: that’s a whole freaking lot of people. For a long time now, it’s been looking like Google is perfectly safe where it is, remaining platform agnostic while Microsoft and Apple and the rest duke it out. But, to their credit, Google’s strategists didn’t quite think like that. Something woke them up a few years ago.
I think it was the iPhone. In January 2007 when the iPhone was first announced, Google appeared on stage with glowing praise about the power of the web in your pocket. Yahoo were there too, remember them? Unlike their ancient rival though, Google had decided to play a bigger rôle in the smartphone market than they were letting on at Apple’s keynote. They had Android in the works. And Chrome.
There’s been a lot written about Android on the NetBook as well as on the phone. So far it’s not come to much. I’m not really an Android afficionado anyhow. Not until it starts to show the same kind of promise as Palm has done in the Pre. But Chrome OS on the laptop … now there’s a thought.
Google isn’t motivated by direct profit from software sales. This is an immense advantage compared to BeOS, OS/2, and the handful of other ludicrously archaic sounding commercial rivals Windows has slaughtered over its many years. Google isn’t motivated by selling hardware either. This opens up the cheap and nasty underbelly of the global market Apple cares not to touch. And Google isn’t immersed within the fractured politics of the open source movement in the same way as Ubuntu’s Canonical and Firefox’s Mozilla. Google makes its money through ads. That’s a terrific strength, given how they dominate this field. It means that if there’s one outfit in the world right now who can unilaterally make the Grand Unified Linux and get it on to hundreds of millions of machines, they are it.
If there were at last a time to displace Windows as the software of default on low end hardware, it has come. Google brings to Linux what no one else has managed so far: consistency and, I hope, common sense. If Google’s trademark minimalism can be brought off on the desktop, we could be really talking.
There’s already some squeamishness about this among believers in free software. It’s the same force against standardising on anything which has kept their products restricted to such a self-enforcing niche. But I know where the panic will really be felt. 2009 is turning out to be another trying year for Microsoft. How are they going to have to price Windows 7 to compete with Google’s free? How many more years will old granma XP be kept on life support to suit the lowest end hardware Google is targeting? That’s not a place you want to be. Expect some pretty hard wriggling out of Microsoft.
So, yes, I’m pretty stoked about Chrome OS. I’d be even happier if they gave it a catchier name, but the idea alone will do. Mac fanatic that I am, I’m unlikely to buy a system running it but the more power HTML 5 and all open standards receive, the better it is for my platform too. So here’s to the best of luck for Google.
I have to wonder though: will they give a fuck about Flash? Hope not.
