Google Chrome OS An Open Source Challenge to Windows

By Keir Thomas, PC World, 07/08/09

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You have to give Google points for style here.

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Commentators might be wondering why Google isn't licensing existing Microsoft technologies, but that would miss the point entirely. By using open source, Google is positioning itself diametrically opposite Microsoft. In some ways, Google had no choice but to embrace open source.

But Chrome OS marks a serious escalation of the war between the two companies, especially considering that Google is cleverly targeting the two traditional weaknesses in Microsoft products: security and speed. We can soon expect a casual announcement from Steve Ballmer, made "in passing" to a journalist, that attempts to pop Google's bubble. However, I suspect there are a lot of sweaty-palmed people at Microsoft right now. The laser printer may well be spewing resumes.

Microsoft really is dead in the water. It might be churning a profit right now, but it's business model and products have reached the natural end of their life and Microsoft just hasn't evolved or changed to keep up. It's a 20th century company, doing 20th century stuff. The rest of the world is moving on.

The key issue for Microsoft is this: Google has a lot of trust out there in the real world. This is the crucial strength that can really land a sucker punch on Microsoft. The likes of mom and pop, who don't even know what Windows is (much to Microsoft's glee), will trust Google enough to blindly switch to the new OS. (Especially if, on a technical level, Chrome OS uses something like Wubi to make installation ultra-easy and safe.)

If you're a geek who helps out non-techie people, you should get to know about Google Chrome OS because you'll almost certainly be getting questions about it soon.

3. Google is going to own your desktop experience.

Google already intends to own your mobile phone, and it's owned your Internet searches since about 2000. For many of us, it's owned our email since about 2004 too.

Many people assume that Google is producing all this wonderful software out of the goodness of its heart, or simply to give Microsoft a hard time. While I suspect both these reasons are true to an extent (I believe Google is actually quite a philanthropic organisation), many people forget Google's ruthless purpose in life: It wants to own every shred of data you generate.

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