The new “operating system” from Google announced as the Windows killer and similar headlines mentioning torpedoes and war like scenarios just made me wonder. Wonder in many ways…
Is that why Twitter is so successful? Because all we really need are 140 characters to kick off a heated discussion? Or we just need exaggerated headlines to make something sound bigger than it is? Is that why we had Wolfram Alpha the Google killer, Silverlight the Flash killer and there was some Video thing that killed some radio… can’t remember.
Google Chrome OS sounds so much like Google Chrome running straight on a Linux kernel. Ups, it is Google Chrome on a Linux kernel! Cool. Applications are developed as web applications running on Google Chrome “OS” and any other browser. Cool. Very cool. Web applications… ahh!
But this will not kill Windows, Microsoft or anything else as it is just not an operating system; it’s a browser on steroids.
Now, this is not a bad thing. I personally like the idea and would love to be more disconnected from the traditional desktop and more connected to the web, but web apps just can’t replace word processors, graphic applications, 3D games and all the other tools we use on a daily basis yet.
Windows gained over 90% share in the last year in the US netbook market and the main reason is that people are just too used to it. Not to forget; netbooks originally designed to be low cost notebooks for developing countries, now became mainstream and the consumer has that $50 extra for MS Windows.
You cannot just shoot down a platform with 90% market share, that’s as likely as the success of the emails you get that say: if we all don’t buy gas tomorrow the oil prices will drop.
As Mr. Spolsky once said, you could just end up doing free market research for Microsoft when they suddenly ship Explorer OS. A free version of Windows that auto starts IE and disables all the other buttons.