Desktop and Browser Wars – Google Chrome O/S

The two titans of the desktop and browser world, Microsoft and Google, have escalated their epic battle by introducing products into each other’s strongest-held territories. Microsoft recently released Bing, its new search technology, aimed directly at Google’s core (tune into my next blog, where I’ll discuss this in detail). Google struck back by hitting Microsoft’s monopoly, the desktop, with a version of the Chrome Browser as a streamlined, no-frills operating system. These giants have been attacking each other’s market share, technologies, business models, and license access for years, but never has the competition been this volatile.

Google Chrome O/S has a simple UI and a low footprint that fires up quickly – plus, it manages multiple sessions in a secure manner. It will be distributed as an open-source O/S, focused entirely on serving Web-based applications in a browser. This is a different architecture than Windows and Linux where the browser runs “on top” of the O/S and is at the mercy of how the O/S manages such things as the resource pool, memory, and other process-based calls. Why is this groundbreaking?

Because it’s breaking the barriers of Operating System, Browsers, mobile and your desktop.

Dynamic Web applications and user interaction require the browser and O/S to be as efficient as possible for speedy page-load times. This is a huge issue, especially if you consider a browser on a mobile device with less bandwidth. Google Chrome O/S is built to support and optimize a browser environment with a goal to load Web apps and pages fast. Processing power is relying on distributed server-based cloud computing.


In the past two years, phones have started to become mini-computers with applications ranging from games and personal finance management to corporate file access, word processing, email, and more. The introduction of the iPhone along with Apple’s notion that there is an application for everything has created a new consumer mindset. From a trend and forecasting perspective, the Chrome O/S will extend its provide power and simplicity from the phone to the workstation.

Does Google want to compete with Microsoft head to head? Probably not. However, considering that Google makes money from search and selling advertising, it’s in their interest to have more people spending time on the Web, preferably using their own platform. The Chrome O/S rollout is more than a year away, so there’s a lot of time for Microsoft to react. Given Microsoft’s 90-percent market share in the desktop market, Google has its work cut out. It looks like Google wants to initially attack the low-hanging fruit market of notebooks and PDA-type devices at the consumer level. I doubt corporations will adopt quickly, especially when you consider that the official release is more than a year away. They’ve succeeded in getting attention in Seattle, as Microsoft executives ponder the meaning and potential effect. Google Chrome may not deliver to all the hype, but the innovation, the momentum of cloud computing, distributed Web application access, and serving of digital information are certainly here to stay.

Related Video:

• Cloud Computing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hplXnFUlPmg

Wikipedia -

• Chrome Browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome
• Chrome Operating System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome_OS
• Chrome Blogspot – http://chrome.blogspot.com/