Google’s Bid to Shatter Windows

I give Microsoft a better chance of toppling Google's dominance in search than I give Google of toppling Microsoft's dominance in the OS arena. Both companies are going after the other's bread and butter, but Bing is an actual product that is taking market share away now, and Steve Ballmer has committed $4-5 billion over the next few years to improving Bing and going after Google. Chrome is an anouncement not yet a product.

Second, both companies have a lot of money and both companies hire the best and the brightest in the industry. But Microsoft is in the top 10 on Fotune's list of most profitable companies. They made $17 billion in profit last year. They have the resources to fend off any of Google's attacks on their OS while still funding their attack on Google's search dominance.

Google is still a one-trick pony, whereas Microsoft is more diversified. It seems to me that Google is the more vulnerable of the two.

Technology has really moved to the end point. As memory and processors became cheap, features were moved into the user devices. You've seen this from landline phones to cell phones. Moving back control to the network doesn't make sense because it moves the development bottleneck, the bandwidth bottleneck, and the processing bottleneck back to the network. That's what the old PSTN had! It created a slower feature stream, required more sophisticated networking (COST), and more processing power (COST) that all grew as the feature set grew. Moving intelligence to the endpoint, e.g., cell phones, relieves the network of things that are hard to do. Heck, a smartphone can probably do more than a netbook, today! By tomorrow, the smartphone will be my PC with an external monitor and keyboard! A lot of techies hate Microsoft. The real reason is that they are jealous. Windows might not be the best for techies, but the entire world knows how to use it! And if you ever need support on an MS product, you can find it with only two degrees of freedom. Just ask your neighbor - I'd bet that you'd find an answer in only a couple attempts. While I'm proficient in Unix, I always recommend Windows to the average person because the ubiquitous means that they are certain to find what they need when they need it whether it be support or an application.

The author says Microsoft is dependent on centralized computing and Google is betting on decentralized computing. I believe that's backward. Microsoft's OS is distributed on each PC and running independent of any one central processor (decentralized). Google's OS will be akin to the old centralized maintrame and will be dependent on one centralized processor.

The author says Microsoft is dependent on centralized computing and Google is beting on decentralized computing. I believe that's backward. Microsoft's OS is distributed on each PC and running independent of any one central processor. Google's OS will be akin to the old centralized maintrame and will be dependent on one centralized processor.

As my bellwether of tech (my 18yr old son) says 'Not!!! The broweser sucks now why make it the only interface' While Google and Apple are the cool alternatives Microsoft still has my vote as THE tech company. I may not agree wiht everyting they do or launch but overall I like what they do and use thier stuff

Only the Googlums are excited about this. Everyone else sees it as another tool to collect data.

The vast majority of Google's revenue comes from ads on search. Although google docs and many other of there apps are cool (I use and like them), they are not making the company money. Unless google can figure out how to make money in other arenas, they will slowly loose market dominance as others come up with better search options and steal ad revenue away.

The Google Chrome browser is still pretty weak -

There is some scary stuff coming out of Mordor these days.

If its built to utilize the Linux kernel, then by definition, its not a new OS... As an OSS developer from the early nineties, I'm not sure what's worse. Companies taking what others have built and call it their own (i.e. active directory stolen from Novell), or the simple minded sheeple who blindly prop it up as something new.

*** I am gald to see Google continue to take its eye off the ball on the one thing that produces their revenue - SEARCH!! Bing has already proven that better features and a more rich offering can and will make inroads on Google ***

Could you possibly lick Microsoft's boots a little more enthusiastically? LMAO!

I am gald to see Google continue to take its eye off the ball on the one thing that produces their revenue - SEARCH!! Bing has already proven that better features and a more rich offering can and will make inroads on Google. It is interesting to me that everyone spins this announcement as "what will happen to Microsoft?" - My question is "What will happen to Google?" if they continue to de-focus on their core?? This could be the best news ever for Microsoft...Google won't dent the OS market much and they are leveraging resources away from search...

Normally, I would dismiss this as soon as I read it, but since it's coming from Google, I have to take it seriously. This new O/S is based on the Linux Kernel (big deal, it's been done many times before) but I'll reserve total judgement until I see and use it. If Microsoft don't start trimming their O/S's, they will be dethroned for sure. It looks like Win 7 is heading in the right direction, from what I've been able to demo myself the last few months, but anyone that gives customers what they really want, and make it easy for IT shops to do their day to day jobs better, could easily become the next King.

Microsoft will rather build better search engine than Google develop competitive OS. Look at Linux.

Chrome OS will take years to make minor inroads. Choices about operating system are not based on quality, or features, etc. They are based on the inertia built into IT departments and the ecosystems that surround the OS. Otherwise Mac OS X would have prevailed long ago. Targeting netbooks where MS is most vulnerable is smart, but it still has to compete with various flavors of Linux, on which Chrome is going to be based, and various flavors of Windows, not least of which is XP.

Microsoft's monopoly is not based on high-quality, so even if Chrome is (and I expect it will be) a superior offering it will take years and billions to dislodge even a minority of Windows boxes from the installed base or to supplant anything but a trivial minority of installed OSes on new machines.

A distant fourth to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux is my prediction, at least for the first five years.