They say that necessity is the mother of invention. If this is true, then Google OS is headed for failure.
For those of you who have never heard of Google OS, you can watch this video:
or I can tell you about it instead.
Think for a moment about bumper cars. Just about anyone can drive a bumper car. They are limited in speed, but you can have a ton of fun playing with them. The only downside to bumper cars is that they have to be inside the special electrified cage in order to work. Take them out, and they simply won’t work. That’s what an operating system is: It’s a cage that allows all of your programs to work. In the past, taking programs outside an operating system made about as much sense as taking bumper cars out of the cage.
Today, we are being slowly introduced to so-called “Cloud Computing” which allows programs to be taken out of the computer as we know it and ran in the “cloud” over the Internet. Every day you access programs that run in the cloud without even thinking about it. If you use gmail or yahoo mail, you have accessed a program that runs in the cloud. Anyone who has ever used a Google doc or played a browser-based game has used cloud computing without even knowing it. This isn’t new technology, but the scope thus far has been limited.
Google wants to fix that. They plan to release an operating system based on Linux and designed to run on netbook computers. Netbooks, as you may know, are similar to laptops at first glance, but have very limited systems. They typically run on flash memory and with very low graphic capabilities compared to today’s newer computers. Google plans to provide Netbook manufacturers with copies of Google Chrome OS to put on these Netbooks and then the users will connect to the Internet to access their data, including all programs they wish to run.
There are several reasons all of this is a bad idea for Google:
(1) “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” When a new product is released, it usually fills a market bracket called a “need”. When cotton pickers of old could not keep up with the demands of the day, someone invented to combine tractor and fulfilled the need for faster harvesting. Google has thus far been unable to actually find a need for yet another operating system, despite their own ideas of creating one for the Netbook group.
(2) “Momma said knock you out!” Google is by far the biggest name in Internet search and advertising. They set the bar when it comes to how any given website is located and ranked anywhere in the world. The problem is, that’s pretty much all they are really good at and when Microsoft came along and tried to pull and inside run on them with their own search engine, Google got mad. Then they tried to get even. So far, pretty much everything they have tried has failed. Google Maps and Google Earth is the best thing since sliced bread, in my book. Gmail is my primary email access, however it has had some serious ups and downs in the past. Then Google goes after Microsoft with the gloves off. Google Docs is awesome, but with Google’s issues over privacy and the major corporations’ concern over security, it will never compete seriously with Microsoft Office. By the way, OpenOffice is actually starting to kick Microsoft’s ass in a way that Google Docs never has. Then they introduced Knol, which is pretty much a flop. They also tried their hand against Second Life with Lively, which is now kaput. Should we even discuss Orkut? My point being: You shouldn’t toss your cash out the window in the hopes of distracting the other drivers in a race. It rarely works and the money could have gone to making what does work, work better.
(3) “Don’t be evil” Yes, that’s actually part of Google’s own credo. I am very proud of Google’s Open Source initiative. With their backing, the Open Source community has grown by leaps and bounds. As a result, Google has proven that you can give away your source code and still make money. Companies like SuSE(Novell) and RedHat make millions of dollars a year from Open Source software. Chromium OS is now available as an Open Source download right now, however the operating system itself will not be available to download. Unlike Open Source versions of Linux, Chromium OS will only provided to machine manufacturers for distribution only to people who buy the Netbooks. So if you have a Netbook right now and you are biting your nails in anticipation, I hate to disappoint you, but it’ll nevah happen. To me, that’s evil. You release your code to the wild, hoping to get feedback and free bug fixes by the programming community, but the only way you are going to release the results is when people pay you for it?
So go ahead and write this down for me, kay? If Google doesn’t change their mind about a few of the plans they have for Chromium, it will be appearing on shelves at your local Wal-Mart in about a year. Two years after that, after you’ve thrown out your “Chromium OS Rocks!” T-shirts and torn off your “I heart Chromium” bumper stickers, you can slap yourself in the head for that very large carbon footprint you just stomped into the local dump when you tossed the POS Netbook that booted in 7 seconds and pretty much nothing else worthwhile, and say to yourself, “I should have listened to Shane and just spent my money on that stripper instead!”