Filling the device gap [LWN.net]

Filling the device gap

Posted Jul 8, 2009 18:58 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455)
In reply to: How big is it by marduk
Parent article: The Google Chrome OS

I agree with most of what you say, except for this last part:

"What Google wants is to squeeze as much power/influence as the can over what they can put on the OS/Web Browser. "

I think it is even simpler. Google wants more devices to access the web and MS does not actually do a very good job at that.

MS (and most cell phone manufacturers) prevent the creation of cheaper low end web devices, google sees this gap and wants someone (they don't care who) to fill it. They see that since there is a device gap, they are losing potential customers. The faster they can fill this potential burgeoning device gap, the better...

"Enter Android and Chrome OS."

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Filling the device gap

Posted Jul 8, 2009 21:32 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Well fundamentally, if Microsoft controls the only viable platform for your business to run it's applications on then they control your business.

Look at what happened to Novell. Microsoft is able to provide tight integration between Windows Desktop, Office, and Active Directory and make it all work by 'default'. This required very little skill and was cheap to setup and get working. Novell on the other hand required very experienced people to setup the same thing and was much more expensive to deploy.

So Novell lost hard and now AD is the defacto standard method for managing corporate desktop environments.

Microsoft controlled the only viable platform for deploying Novell's software so Novell could not compete, even though their solutions were technically superior in most respects.

And it's the same thing with WWW. Microsoft, for the longest time, controls the only viable platform for reaching the majority of users out there. That's why it's a pipe dream that will never come true that web applications on browsers will displace the importance of Windows.

Microsoft has to much control over your platform.

Witness the debates over the <video> tag and such. Apple may be acting like a huge dick and throwing a wrench into the entire thing, but fundamentally everybody knows it's mostly irrelevant unless Microsoft decides to add video tag support to IE, which they won't do.

If they don't do that then turns something that exceptionally trivial to deploy* and turns into a major headache were you need to support the current way of doing things + the new video-tag way.

*(streaming video via video tag is so cheap and easy it is just massively blows away any competition. Try it sometime, it's laughable how simple video tag makes things. To RTSP server, no flash BS, no special software, no Apache modules, no nothing. Just drop the video file on your server and point at it like it was a jpeg image.)

And even if Chrome and Firefox do overthrow IE as the dominate browser it is only one small step. Microsoft still controls the platforms that they run on and will still be able to limit the viability of it and push their own solutions forward.

Filling the device gap

Posted Jul 8, 2009 21:47 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

Great rant... but why does this explain google creating its own OS, how does it help their bottom line?

Me thinks simpler things are more important, especially when they fit the bill. Not to discount all the other reasons you mention as promoting the same cause, but there really is a simpler motive for google. It is a no brainer if google can get more people online more often to access their services more often to bring them more money. Not evil, not some grand idealistic scheme either, just a simple one.

Filling the device gap

Posted Jul 8, 2009 22:11 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

> Great rant... but why does this explain google creating its own OS, how does it help their bottom line?

Because if they can create their own OS and make it attractive then they can provide a solution that has a fully integrated stack from top to bottom very much similar to what Microsoft has with Active Directory...

Not the same thing, mind you, Microsoft targets corporations were Google is more going after individuals... but similar in concept.

Google mail, Google IM, Google Office, Google VoIP, Google Search, Google Calendering, etc etc. Everything is tightly integrated and 'just works' and is setup by default. Every aspect of the system is configured by default to make those things work as well as possible. All of it working together to provide a seamless solution that competitors are not going to be able to deal with easily.

Google won't be able to provide that same level of integration if they are dependent on Microsoft Windows based platform to reach their customers.

That's all. I know I am restating things, but its hard for me to tell if I am being clear or not.

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> Me thinks simpler things are more important, especially when they fit the bill. Not to discount all the other reasons you mention as promoting the same cause, but there really is a simpler motive for google. It is a no brainer if google can get more people online more often to access their services more often to bring them more money. Not evil, not some grand idealistic scheme either, just a simple one.

I think right now the Android stuff and Chrome OS stuff is probing the possibilities and trying to generate more hype and keep people interested in Google.

Right now I expect that Google has lots of excess capital. It's expected of them to use that to try to expand their markets and try to come up with new ways to attract customers and generate revenue. It's not expected that they win every time... even if they try a 100 different things and only 10 or 20 succeed and 1-2 succeed very well then that will more then make up for the losses caused by the failures.

So this is 'throw the pasta at the wall and see if it sticks' type thing. Chrome OS and Android are more research then anything else. Especially Chrome OS, I think that Android is a much more serious effort, but still it's very experimental.

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Another way to look at it is...

It's just a large corporation trying to play games, if you want to look at it that way. I am sure that for a corporation of Google's type it would be a feather in their cap to take another hunk out of Microsoft.

This sort of thing is not that uncommon, even if it does not make a lot of sense. It's human nature. Go and look at the NY skyline or any large city and you'll see huge business buildings erected for this or that corporation.

It's purely a phallic symbol.. a 'mine is bigger then yours' type thing. It gets exponentially more expensive to build taller and taller buildings. I have heard that due to the infrastructure required and all the extra expenses that it makes almost no economic sense to ever build a office building above 30 stories or so. Even in expensive areas. So those large buildings are just trophies.

Google OS certainly has a business potential, but ya it could quite possibly be more a Ego booster then anything else...

Filling the device gap

Posted Jul 9, 2009 6:48 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I like your explanation much better too. Just doing an OS "because they can" makes no sense, and besides they have Android already. Fear of platform competition is more interesting, but Microsoft has done all their bag of dirty tricks by now (defaults, breakage, embracing+extending, bundling) with ~90% platform dominance and it has not been enough.

But, having a barebones OS for pervasive devices can be a huge target for Google. Netbooks and smartphones are just a first step; once we have a semi-capable computer on most appliances things start to get interesting.