What Google Wants

Google’s operating system project is probably the search giant’s most forceful attempt to hasten the end of the operating system era | IslamOnline.net

Technology rumor sites, and probably everybody else, were caught off guard. Google, which is the subject of an ever-revolving rumor mill, announced last Tuesday that it’s working on an operating system, dubbed Chrome OS.

And that was a surprise. After all, it’s no secret that Google has been working to elevate the web browser to be the center of users’ interaction with information. Whether you wanted to compose a formal letter or share your photos with family, Google made sure that a web browser (and a Google account) would suffice.

That comes at the expense of operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows — because as web browsers become more important, operating systems grow less so. It didn’t really matter what operating system (OS) you were using if all you needed it for was to run the web browser, where most, if not all, of the action occurs. Or so was the conventional wisdom, until Google uncovered its OS plans. The question then is what is the wisdom, if any, behind Google’s summer-lull-disrupting announcement?

A Matter of Rivalry?

In order to make sense of Google’s move, we may consider a couple of explanations. One is that the search giant just wants to inflict pain upon its main rival, Microsoft. That explanation is compelling given some of the details in Google’s announcement. Not only will the planned Chrome OS be a customized version of Linux (Windows’ rival in several IT sectors), but it will also be distributed to PC manufacturers and users at zero or almost-zero cost. So far Acer, Asus, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and
Toshiba among others, are collaborating with Google on its OS effort.

But then firms often invest with their eyes set on gains for themselves rather than losses by their competitors. Therefore it’s likely that Google sees a benefit in stepping into the realm dominated by Microsoft.

That, in turn, raises another question: Is Microsoft’s loss automatically Google’s gain? History, as well as the way things stand today, suggests otherwise. Google has risen to spectacular prominence
by piggybacking on Windows and browsers that run on it. Similarly, Microsoft has found in Google’s success a new business model (that search-associated ads can be a source of substantial revenues) that it itself is now pursuing.

So instead of trying to understand Chrome OS in terms of the company’s rivalry with Microsoft (a job perhaps better suited for business pundits), let’s find out if the planned OS fits the arc of Google’s earlier products. More importantly still, what a new operating system will mean to the rest of us, end-users.

The Name is Chrome

The answer to many of the questions revolving around the OS announcement appears to reside, if cryptically, in the name Google has chosen for its planned OS. Chrome is the name of Google’s browser (initially rumored to be “G-Browser”) released in February 2008. The connection between the two Chromes is unambiguous.

In the official announcement, Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson of Google ensured that the order of
things at Google was not lost on anyone. Chrome OS was a “natural extension of Google Chrome [the browser].” That is, the browser is the thing, and its namesake OS is to play a secondary, probably
subservient, role.

Still, Google could have taken an easier route. It could have invested more money and manpower in its ongoing collaboration with Mozilla Foundation for better FireFox support for Google services, such
as Gmail and Maps. Or it could have focused on its own browser, Chrome.

Google has tried these and other approaches. For example, it has made most of its online services available offline through an open-source browser plug-in called “Gears.” The search engine giant has
also been rather quick in allowing access to its services on an ever-expanding roster of smartphones.

But then the operating system layer appeared to remain a hurdle. Google can be quite sure that once you are on the web browser they will have something that lures you (the search engine, Gmail, the web-based RSS reader, perhaps). Until the user gets her browser up and running, however, many distractions may tempt the user away from the “standard” trajectory. With internet search becoming all-important, the search box (Google’s and others’) is increasingly front and center on a broad array of applications, from instant messengers and media players, to word processors and e-mail clients.

Moreover, as Windows continues to run about 90% of the world’s personal computers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will almost certainly continue to be the predominant web browser. This is an unfair
advantage, as most Firefox users would probably tell you. But it’s the way things are. Google knows it.

In Google’s plans to cater for “people who live on the web,” the browser, particularly Chrome, would be too vulnerable to be left at the mercy of the operating system. And attempts to address this shortcoming, like Gears, have had a mixed record.

An OS to End the Dominance of its Own Species

Thus came Chrome, the operating system. Granted, the Chrome OS will be targeted initially at relatively low-power laptops (commonly known as netbooks), and if it catches on it will gnaw at the Windows share. However, it’s unlikely that Google’s goal is to dislodge Windows. Windows is safely
guaranteed to stay in the foreseeable future, thanks to Microsoft’s deeply intertwined relations with three constituencies: PC manufacturers, software developers, and of course users, hundreds of millions of them.

It appears, therefore, that what Google wants to achieve by its newly unveiled plans is not really to compete head-to-head with Microsoft in the operating system arena. That would likely be an unnecessary and long drawn out fight that might not benefit anyone (at least in the short run). After all, as we’ve learned from history, in times of existential wars, as in Netscape and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer fight in the mid-1990s, competitors often trade disciplined compliance with standards for eye-catching features. And the result is often compatibility issues that users bear the brunt of.

Rather, Google appears to push for a different conception of operating systems in which they play a secondary role, and the “web is the platform.” In this conception, which of course isn’t a Google invention, PCs are appliances that connect users to their online lives.

Also important, the applications written for Chrome OS will work with any standards-compliant web browser in any operating system. In essence, then, Google is seeking the commoditization of the operating system, the way Microsoft before it pushed for the commoditization of the hardware (leading IBM, the company that invented the modern personal computer, to eventually sell its PC unit to Lenovo, a Chinese PC manufacturer, in 2005).

In other words, what Microsoft proved, to the detriment of IBM, is that what mattered was not the hardware, but the software that ran it, chiefly the operating system. What Google (as well as others) is
seeking to achieve now is to convince everybody that what matters is the applications that get users what they want, not the operating system.

For the new wave of web-centric firms, the operating system is just another software layer, necessary but not critical. Be it a Windows, an Ubuntu, a Mac, a Chrome, or even an Android, the operating  system, Google seems to hope, will be irrelevant.

A Linux for the Masses?

Despite my best intentions, I have obviously yielded, a little at least, to the temptation to view the Chrome OS plan as part of the epic fight between the two information technology titans of our time,
Microsoft and Google. More important, though, is what Chrome OS, due in second half of 2010, will mean, not to Microsoft, but to the rest of us.

In this regard, the most important consequence of Chrome OS is that it may at last produce a Linux-based desktop OS for the absolutely programming-illiterate (like myself). And that is no small crowd.

Corporate users have been getting excellent Linux support from the likes of Red Hat and IBM. Progress on the end-user path, by contrast, has been much slower. True, the Ubuntu distribution of Linux has been a welcome arrival, but still one that requires some programming literacy to do small things like watching a movie.

Now that appears about to change. No company with the brains and (brimming) coffers even close to Google has pushed this strongly into the desktop Linux domain. And judging by their experience with Android (the Linux-based OS for mobile phones and low-power PCs), there’s reason to think that the Google folks will do a good job. True, Android was not the instant hit that the iPhone (with its tweaked Mac OS X) was. But it’s steadily showing on more phones.

This is important because a serious competition from a Linux-based desktop operating system will compel Microsoft (Windows) and Apple (Mac OS X) to do a better job. And that is good for all involved – chiefly the users.

And if Chrome OS proves to be such a success that Windows and Mac start to mimic its Web-centric conveniences, that may indeed spell the end of operating systems as the all-important software layer on a computer.