Google throws a challenge to Microsoft

Windows world The first version of Microsoft’s Windows was launched in 1985. Today, it runs on over 90 per cent of the world’s billion-plus computers Penguin flop The open source Linux operating system, developed in the early 1990s, has failed to challenge Windows and has a meagre 2 per cent market share SEARCH giant Google on Wednesday unveiled a browser-based computer operating system, making by far its most audacious assault on Microsoft’s decades-long Windows monopoly
The Chrome Operating System, based on the eponymous browser launched nine months ago, is Google’s “attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Sundar Pichai, VP, product management, who also headed the development of the Chrome browser, wrote announcing the launch on the Google blog
The idea of a browser as the operating system was initially touted as early as 1994 when Marc Andreessen’s Netscape browser hit the market and eventually led to its famous browser war with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the late 1990’s. The dizzying rise of Google early this century renewed the possibility that the Web-based company would use the browser, rather than any other piece of software, to take a stab at the world’s biggest technology company, Microsoft
Still, Google’s announcement has caught the tech world by surprise. Most expected its Android operating system — designed initially for mobile phones and now being used on so-called Netbooks (cheaper and smaller laptops which use flash RAM instead of hard drives) — to be its base for an assault on the PC market in which Microsoft holds a market share of over 90 percent
Even though the Chrome OS can run “computers ranging from small Netbooks to full-size desktop systems,” as Pichai said, Google is initially targeting the skyrocketing Netbooks market. Last year, about 14 million Netbooks were sold globally and despite the global slump analysts expect it to rise to 30-35 million
The Chrome OS will bring a number of advantages to users, not least its cost. Google is likely to give it away free or at a nominal charge as Chrome OS is developed from a free and open source kernel, and the larger goal surely would be to shut Microsoft out of the Netbooks market
Qualitatively, too, Chrome will provide a number of benefits, especially for users who tend to do almost everything on the Net. It will run computers faster than Windows-based PCs and run almost all Web applications, eventually perhaps precluding the need for desktop software.

Source: Indian Express, ENS Chennai