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Well, it appears the only thing bigger online then the death of Michael Jackson is the birth of Google’s Chrome OS. The internet is filled with Google adoration and shameless Microsoft baiting, with a feeling running through many tech sites like the enthusiasm of the bullied nerd when their big brother arrives. “Oh BOY Microsoft are you gonna get it NOW!”. Many have Redmond dead, buried and paved over by just the announcement of Google’s upcoming cloud-based operating system.

It seems that every pundit, savant and forum troll who claims to know anything at all about the tech world has an opinion about the announcement of Google’s newest venture, this troll included. What sort of effect will this announcement REALLY have in the short term, considering it will be a year and a half at least until we have a release version of this software? I have a few wild ideas, and none of them even directly involve Microsoft…yet.

The End of Linux As We Know It: Red Hat and suse and Ubuntu and Fedora and Eudora and Debian…what do they mean to the average consumer? About as much as Messi and Kaka and Ronaldo and Ronaldinho and Totti and Buffon mean to American sports fans…nothing. Now, they won’t have to try since Chrome OS will be based on one of those lucky Linux kernels, completely hiding it from view, and leave the IT lab far behind. The answer to the question “Can true Linux ever break into the consumer market” will finally be seen…No. Chrome OS will have the incredible benefit of Google name recognition which will vault it past the hurdles “true Linux” kernels could never clear.. Many internet users just keep Google as the homepage and go from there. It is familiar and at least for the moment, mostly trusted. Linux will go back to what it was meant to be, a hobbyist’s OS. Leave the consumer market to those with marketing budgets.

Apple Makes Phones…JUST Phones: I have had the nagging suspicion for ages now that Steve Jobs would be happiest selling off the MacBook line and focusing totally on iPhones, iPods and other consumer products. Lately people have seemed less comfortable with The Turtlenecked One…the whole health shell game left people uneasy and reports of his autocratic, ego focused management style have begun to be discussed more (Harvard Business School just published a piece calling him a great visionary, but a lousy CEO). ..and as Steve goes, so goes Apple now. Sure there will always be Macs, but expect them to become even more niche oriented, more powerful and more expensive. Apple has been doing their best to appear to be egalitarian in order to take advantage of the “anti-Microsoft” market. When those types begin switching to Chrome OS, and they will, Apple will take their faithful and return to what they do best…elegant consumer designs, professional graphics machines and luxury computers. Entry level models need not apply any longer. Steve will happily leave the unwashed, uncool mob to Google.

The Death of Firefox: Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape on Google funding, support and visibility for one purpose and one purpose only…to piss off Microsoft. The more Firefox annoyed Microsoft, the more all those “IE is down to 92 percent…we’ve got em on the RUN, gang!!” got heavy play. Google is now going to need all those positive headlines and hip eyeballs looking at Chrome, not Firefox. Therefore expect the funding to go away slowly…and more importantly, the subtle Firefox advertising that covers the Google search engine will change. All of those pointers and “IE Sux” messages will now direct users to Chrome, not Firefox. I would be very surprised if Firefox has any sort of business model that doesn’t assume Google will be paying most of the bills. Therefore, by the time Chrome OS is readily available, expect Firefox to be sharing a forgotten park bench with Opera, trying to figure out what went wrong back when they were Prom Queen.

Evil Empire II: People tend to say they hate Microsoft because of poor code, but also because they have so much control over the computing experience. Nobody likes a monopoly, and Google has made much of their David status against the Microsoft Goliath. People are beginning to see that differently as Google involves themselves in more and more facets of online life. At this point, for most people all the ads they see online and all the URLs they search for are controlled by Google. So is much of their email, and often the very applications they use for work. So if the operating system AND the internet browser AND the business applications AND the email client AND the smartphone software AND the online advertising are all controlled by one company, is it better that the company is Google and not Microsoft? Initially maybe, but a year and a half is a LONG time on the internet. A lot of things can happen in that time, and already a lot of grenades are being tossed Google’s way. People are beginning to get the feeling that the only reason Sergey and Larry hated the fact Microsoft ran the show was because THEY wanted to, no free market altruism at all. I ran Google+Investigation through a  search engine (alright, yes, I googled it) and came up with 36,000,000 references. Even of half of those are poor hits, 18 million is a whole lot, and clearly indicates both the US and the EU are getting very nervous about Google’s monopolistic tendencies. A lot of cases can come up for trial and review in a year and a half, and by the time Chrome OS is available, Google may not be quite as trusted as they are now.

I have no idea what long term effect Chrome OS will have on Microsoft. It will be tough for Chrome OS to make a dent in the Enterprise, and even consumers will be pretty resistant to an OS that is totally cloud based…lots of factors will need to play themselves out before we know just how successful Google’s gambit against MS will be. However, like the opening card at a heavyweight boxing match, a lot of smaller fighters are going to get beaten up by this before Microsoft and Google even lace on the gloves.

(Photo Credit – Wired)

Zealot (469 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).