Today, as I opened my FriendFeed, I was astonished as I read, via Rob Diana, the announcement that Google will build a “Chrome OS”, geared initially to netbook users who mostly run web applications.
If you read through the official press release and skip over the marketing parts of it, you’ll come to a paragraph that sums it up for me:
While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.
Why does Google need to offer two Operating Systems? Why not make an Android “light” and a full Android.
There might be technical reasons that make sense for them having two, but here I’m thinking about the users; most of them don’t even know what OS means, and to compete with Apple and Microsoft, you should really put your full force behind one project and not dilute yourself in two.
Chrome is already gaining acceptance as a browser. If you want to upgrade it to something, I’d say keep it as a client running on top of something else. But introducing another OS when Android is still struggling sounds like a bad idea.
Louis Gray and ReadWriteWeb talk about the new OS as well. Sarah Perez and The Apple Blog talk about it as well.
{ 59 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m not sure how Android is "struggling" with Motorola making "several" devices that run on it, as well as other major phone manufacturers delivering Android devices this year. Seems to me, it’s off to a good start, especially since everyone I know that has a G1 absolutely loves their phone.
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@Michael it is struggling in the sense that a lot of carriers have been reluctant or have had difficulty implementing it. T-Mobile’s G3 may not see the light of day for 2009. And, by the way, I’m a G1 user and absolutely love it. My point with the post is the dual marketing of OS might hurt Google against the other big two guys, MS and Apple.
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Jorge, Android was never designed to run on everything, only on largely-pocketable devices (to avoid tying it to cell phones). As such, it carries functionality that may be of little use in larger, desktop-centered installations. Hence the Chrome OS (which, btw., we haven’t see none of it yet, so go easy on the criticism-in-advance pedal), which p.r.e.s.u.m.a.b.l.y is better integrated with the desktop Chrome browser. Also, if I read the announcement right, the OS will be really slimmed down, consciously lacking certain otherwise given dimensions, which Google will want to use the browser for, not the "desktop/ finder" layer for.
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Jorge, Android was never designed to run on everything, only on largely-pocketable devices (to avoid tying it to cell phones). As such, it carries functionality that may be of little use in larger, desktop-centered installations. Hence the Chrome OS (which, btw., we haven’t seen none of it yet, so go easy on the criticism-in-advance pedal), which p.r.e.s.u.m.a.b.l.y is better integrated with the desktop Chrome browser. Also, if I read the announcement right, the OS will really be slimmed down, consciously lacking certain otherwise given dimensions, which Google will want to use the browser for, not the "desktop/ finder" layer for.
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Valid points, ianf, but let me counterpoint quickly. Windows and Windows Mobile. See a common word there? Why not make Android (the version we have now for cellphones) Android Mobile and Android for larger apps? Isn’t an OS an OS no matter what hardware it runs? (I believe Sun was the initial proponent of this back in the 90’s). Don’t tell me Google can’t make Android the OS for everything. To me it sounds like internal struggles between the Android group and the larger Google group. I criticize in advance because Google has already announced it to the world and it already sounds like a dumb move.
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It seems likely that the two groups within Google couldn’t come to a common vision and decided to fight it out. Otherwise it’s quite irrational.
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@Todd. E.X.A.C.T.L.Y.
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I think the basic idea is that with Chrome, they do not need to worry about the hardware due to the use of the Linux kernel. Android is a different beast entirely because it is a mobile phone OS which will typically have various apps installed as well. With ChromeOS, they get a barebones install and everything is cloud based. Basically, they are trying both models to see what gains more acceptance.
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Jorge, Windows doesn’t run clean or on ANYTHING, and Windows Mobile is just a brain dead attempt to port it down to far more mission-critical hardware than desktop ever was, ergo the comparison is moot. I don’t know Android too well, so I’ll stick to primarily philosophical and mercantile arguments… it may well be that Google decided it NEEDS to keep competition alive within the company in order to thrive. So it created two near-but-not-too-near parallel development divisions. Neither Android, nor the (barely announced, and so far unreleased) Chrome OS have so far any larger market shares to be concerned with. So, who knows, maybe one of them will prove the better of the two, and then they will decide to retire the other?
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Another possible angle is that it’s not a netbook OS only. They plan on embracing and extending other form factors and for that Linux is a better base. If you only want to produce a small form instant on browser base it’s hard to see why android wouldn’t work just fine.
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@ianf, I believe calling Windows Mobile "brain dead" is a bit of a stretch, specially knowing Redmond. I had a T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur) and had nothing against the OS, more against the hardware. Plus Windows Mobile is coming with a new version that’s supposed to be better/faster. Windows 7 is getting rave reviews, so watch out if we don’t be surprised with a great WinMo.
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@ianf, now the internal competition thing, I agree could be the case. But as a marketing move, again, this is dumb.
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As a marketing move it only creates confusion in the marketplace and splits the brand. What works where? How do I develop for each? Where do I buy apps? Do my apps work cross Google? They will be on different bases with completely different release cycles and priorities for very similar needs. As a developer and a user I’m already confused.
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As a marketing move it only creates confusion in the marketplace and splits the brand. What works where? How do I develop for each? Where do I buy apps? Do my apps work cross Google? They will be on different bases with completely different release cycles and priorities for very similar needs. As a developer and a user I’m already confused. If I were MS and Apple I would exploit this confusion.
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Google Has Done Bad Moves in the Past. Chrome OS is One of Them. – jungleG http://ff.im/-4XHhF
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First off that Android is struggling post was from a year ago, a moot point.
Second off it makes sense. Android is focused for monbile phones, sure it can run off of netbooks but it has never been officially declared to do so.
Think of it like this.
windows 7 -> Chrome OS, Windows Mobile -> Android
The mobile world isn’t ready for a web OS. Not yet anyways.
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when I hear Android as "thing for netbooks", it makes me smiling… Chrome OS is wise step in sense it will make blow in on netbooks kicking MS & all other closed-sourced crowd. Android is too much lean and mean for that kind of fight.
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I think there is another, better example for comparison with the alleged Android/ Chrome OS function duality: it’s the OSX Cocoa Touch for iPhone and iTouch devices. Right now they run the very same version of the OS, though the Touch, while sporting double onboard memory over the biggest iPhone 3GS model, lacks certain key hardware functions – no camera, no GPS module (ergo location services in the Touch degrade transparently to triangulation among hotspots only), no microphone, etc. These features are missing chiefly in order not to undermine demand for leading-edge (thus much more profitable to Apple) iPhone – the ‘Touch seems destined to permanently stay two generations behind its "sibling." Now throw in a (so far mythical) iTablet, or Touch Grande (as I call it to make myself coherent to the $4 latte-Starbucks generation ;-)) into the mix, and all of a sudden you are faced with the choice of what to put on it. Assuming a screen approx. 4 times larger than either Apple device, and a speedy enough processor, it could run…
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Google has too many products, some are good, but I don’t see myself switching OS anytime soon.
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@ianf, found the stats for Mobile OS penetration: "According to research firm IDC, Windows Mobile holds about 15 percent of the mobile OS market, while RIM leads with 48 percent and Apple’s iPhone is in second place with 19 percent. Android only has 7.5 percent of the market."
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Variable features is common and expected. My code can ship with feature support or not or it can turn on/off at runtime. But it’s the same code. Here it will be two different code bases. Completely different situation.
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Jorge, »I believe calling Windows Mobile "brain dead" is a bit of a stretch« – it may well be. I only played with it for half an hour on some HTC smartphone, and I don’t use any other device apart from unphony Palm Lifedrive, but the very concept of creating an OS for mobile devices while leveraging the GUI of the desktop made me puke. Also, I found it incredibly inconsistent in the functions that I tested, and (using myself as a measure – I’m a professional, so I know what I was doing, but don’t you try this at home) couldn’t figure out some other. I disregard the rest of your arguments, because you are talking of vaporware as were it here and in working order now, which is not my overall impression of how Microsoft products do not work [that's why I don't use them, btw.]
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Jorge, are those statistics for market share by unit delivery or dollar volume? If WinMo in 10+ years time and with several tens, if not hundreds OEMs within its dev corral couldn’t capture more than 15% [of the overall figure], and measly Apple could surpass it in just two years, what does it tell you? BTW. I do not believe Apple will ever be the dominant [f]actor in that field simply because they are too small a company to go after the Nokias of this world. Also, far as I can see, they contend themselves with capturing the top-quality segment of the market (=most profit per unit) and leave the volume sellers to others. Without looking at any statistics (perhaps you could corroborate or refute) I know that, if you restrict the sample to just the top brands, the iPhone probably now carries more than 60% of it globally. And that’s where they want to be – too bad I personally am not part of that demographic – as I can not afford a phone with $4000 total cost of ownership pricetag on it.
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Jorge, are those statistics for market share by unit delivery or dollar volume? If WinMo in 10+ years time and with several tens, if not hundreds OEMs within its dev corral couldn’t capture more than 15% [of the overall figure], and measly Apple could surpass it in just two years, what does it tell you? BTW. I do not believe Apple will ever be the dominant [f]actor in that field simply because they are too small a company to go after the Nokias of this world. Also, far as I can see, they contend themselves with capturing the top-quality segment of the market (=most profit per unit) and leave the volume sellers to others. Without looking at any statistics (perhaps you could corroborate or refute) I know that, if you restrict the sample to just the top brands, the iPhone probably now carries more than 60% of it globally. And that’s where they want to be – too bad I personally am not part of that demographic – as I can not afford a phone with $4000 total cost of ownership pricetag on it.
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You don’t catch the point. Android is a brand and it’s for Smartphones. iPhone is Osx basically but they say "iPhone OS". It’s the same. Then welcome Chrome OS, that had different features, different target and different architectures to run on. Chrome OS is not a competitor or a brother of Android, probably is birth from a rib of Android, one day they’ll tell us. The point for me is "Chrome OS" is a good name? In last 2 years Chrome is synonym of a cutting-edge fast multiplatform (ahem) browser. I see they want push concept of a "web based OS" but call it like their browser… I don’t know.. let’s see.
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I’m sorry, but when you consider the big two, no mobile OS works cross platform with its non-mobile counterpart. That confusion does not exist. No offense, but I think that Todd and Jorge are manufacturing a problem out of thin air. Windows and Windows Mobile have the same word in the name, but so what? There is literally nothing that works across the two operating systems, so devs have to develop independently for the different platforms. Apple is the other way, the two OSs share a codebase (and I guess the coding is similar), but do not share names (OSX vs iPhone OS), both nothing works across platforms and there is NO EXPECTATION on the part of the user that the two work with each other. How exactly is this different with Chrome OS and Android (seeing as how they are targeted at completely different markets, much like Win/WinMob and OSX/iPhone OS)?
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I’m sorry, but when you consider the big two, no mobile OS works cross platform with its non-mobile counterpart. That confusion does not exist. No offense, but I think that Todd and Jorge are manufacturing a problem out of thin air. Windows and Windows Mobile have the same word in the name, but so what? There is literally nothing that works across the two operating systems, so devs have to develop independently for the different platforms and users don’t expect the software to work cross-platform. Apple is the other way, the two OSs share a codebase (and I guess the coding is similar), but do not share names (OSX vs iPhone OS); Still, nothing works across platforms and there is still NO EXPECTATION on the part of the user that the two work with each other. How exactly is this situation different with Chrome OS and Android (seeing as how they are targeted at completely different markets, much like Win/WinMob and OSX/iPhone OS)?
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Liked “Google Has Done Bad Moves in the Past. Chrome OS is One of Them. – Thoughts on social media, the web and…” http://ff.im/-4Xz9N
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Consider MS had massive investment in a desktop OS that was completely dominant. It’s understandable there’s a difference between the two platforms. Now, phone capabilities and notebook and even desktop capabilities are quickly converging. On phones we have GPUs, multi-cores, many devices, lots of RAM, lots of disk. Not that much different than a desktop. What’s the rationale for a separate OS?
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Consider MS had massive investment in a desktop OS that was completely dominant. It’s understandable there’s a difference between the two platforms. Now, phone capabilities and notebook and even desktop capabilities are quickly converging. On phones we have GPUs, multi-cores, many devices, lots of RAM, lots of disk. Not that much different than a desktop. What’s the rationale for a separate OS when it doesn’t have to be compatible with a million legacy bits of hardware?
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Consider MS had massive investment in a desktop OS that was completely dominant. It’s understandable there’s a difference between the two platforms. Now, phone capabilities and notebook and even desktop capabilities are quickly converging. On phones we have GPUs, multi-cores, many devices, lots of RAM, lots of disk. Not that much different than a desktop. What’s the rationale for a separate OS when it doesn’t have to be compatible with a million legacy bits of hardware? Especially when apps will largely be mashups of cloud hosted services.
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Google Has Done Bad Moves in the Past. Chrome OS is One of Them. – Thoughts on social media, the web and technology… http://ff.im/-4XRJL
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Google Has Done Bad Moves in the Past. Chrome OS is One of Them. – Thoughts on social media, the web and technology… http://ff.im/-4XRJL
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2 thoughts…
“Android only has 7.5 percent of the market.” That’s still not bad considering it’s available on a lot less phones then Windows Mobile.
My second thought is they may be trying to capitalize on both the Chrome name for the reason Lucio mentioned, in addition they’re trying to cash in on the brand recognition of the Google name.
-Mike
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Chrome OS is the right move at the right time. Android isn’t struggeling. How can you say that? Is this a reality check? Chrome OS is for desktop computer. Android is for mobile devices. There might be an overlap at netbooks, but other than that it’s okay.
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Chrome OS is the right move at the right time. Android isn’t struggeling. How can you say that if there are over 10 devices announced and already 3 on the market in that short time? Chrome OS is for desktop computer. Android is for mobile devices. There might be an overlap at netbooks, but other than that it’s okay.
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@Ryo, I believe iPhone OS has been much more effective than Android. Android is the also-ran kid, as Chrome is on the browser world. Don’t get me wrong, I love Android, I have a G1. My main browser is Chrome. I just think, as I said in my article, at this point of time Google needs to be more focused to have a chance to succeed, and not have a myriad of products that non-techie consumers can’t even begin to understand.
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For me Google is very focused with this: they want to deliver their services as first class applications to the user. This does require a redesign of the OS. This would be crazy if they started to build this stuff from scratch, but they rely mostly on existing open source projects. And while Chrome OS and Android look very different, I’m sure they still have a very large common code base.
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@Oliver there’s something called Linux that is already nimble, and look where it’s gotten to. Google should pick their battles better.
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I don’t believe they want to battle Linux, they just want to optimize it for their purpose: running Google applications the same way as local application.
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In the end the Chrome OS will just be a gateway to Google’s online services. Moving to the cloud has some great applications but I think most prefer to have control over their data. Now if it is a full OS, we’ll need developers to write programs for it. In short I see it being introduced in response to MS Gazelle.
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Hmm, taking a POSIX OS and customizing the hell out of it till you get what you want. Hmmm, now where have I heard of a company doing that before? Hmmmm. @Jorge, as far as Android being less effective, there is a big difference between "less prevalent than the market leader" and "struggling." For a new entrant into the mobile OS game from a company that is not also making the hardware, I would actually say that it’s doing quite well, when you look at current and upcoming lineup (like say, the Hero, which is being looked at domestically by at least Sprint and AT&T from what I’ve heard) and industry adoption. Also, Chrome is the also ran in the browser market that grew to 6% market share in like a year. That is ridiculous.
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Regarding your point on focusing, I definitely agree with you that focus is a good thing and key for Google to succeed, but there is plenty of room in a company as large as Google to "focus" on more than one thing at a time. And indeed, I think that a company that overfocuses in one thing to the detriment of exploring other possible revenue streams and product lines is, in the end, painting itself into a corner.
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Regarding your point on focusing, I definitely agree with you that focus is a good thing and key for Google to succeed, but there is plenty of room in a company as large as Google to "focus" on more than one thing at a time. And indeed, I think that a company that overfocuses in one thing to the detriment of exploring other possible revenue streams and product lines runs the risk of, in the end, painting itself into a corner.
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Read this brilliant piece by Anil Dash http://dashes.com/anil/2009/07/googles-microsoft-moment.html
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Jorge, sorry but the crapPhone OS can’t even compete with the free Android. Android is so much better in any way. I see this totally different from you. We live on other worlds I think.
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