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Jul 11, 09 - 07:24 am Comment from: silverhawk

Bingless since 2009.

The nice thing is that MS and Google will be fighting it out for short term gains while Apple continues to gain traction in the long term.

Google's effort will result in people finally realizing that they don't need to rely on Microsoft for their computing experience, resulting in another potential convert for Apple.

I don't know anyone after switching away from MSFT that has ever chosen to go back. They do waffle between Linux, Unix, Mac OS, etc. I applaud their choice. Google Chrome will be just one more choice for the switchers. I believe the Chrome switchers will eventually try and stay with my favorite OS... but we'll have to wait and see.

There will be very few that will move from Mac OS to Chrome.... mark my words.

I hate to say it but I enjoy using Bing. If M$ has something great I see no reason not to use it. Google is not much different then M$. BTW MDN has a love fest with Google. the EVIL empire. Oh and the slobering love fest between Goog and nobama is disgusting. come on people Chrome isn't going nowhere, I wonder how long it will be in beta 6 years or so. Isn't Gmail still in beta???

Their joint silent enemy will sit back and patiently wait. All the while making gain, which some say is large and some say is small, but nonetheless a gain. Once the two are tired and exhausted from the fight, Apple will move in amazingly fresh to deal a striking blow to both.

It's nice to see the art of war happening before us.

It is folly. An OS that can only run web apps? No thanks. Web sites cannot offer anything NEAR the user experience of a native app, for now at least. Software like MobileMe is the future: access to your information on all your devices, without sacrificing usability, speed, and fluidity by using a web site.

@silver surfer: yes, Bing is actually quite pleasant. I was surprised.

Jul 11, 09 - 08:13 am Comment from: ron

"Google is not much different then M$."

But it is different THAN M$.

Windows is changing the default search in browsers from Google to Bing.

Just goes to show how low Microsoft will go.

Jul 11, 09 - 09:13 am Comment from: zek

Google is different to MS in that Google, like Apple, tries to provide something useful to the community in exchange for the community's money. Although the bottom line is the same, Google and Apple both regard the public as their customers, whereas Ms and others seem to look on the consumers as sheep. They may be right, but still...

Jul 11, 09 - 09:14 am Comment from: Mr. Reeee

Google is like Microsoft?
HUH?

Google actually created a great set of services ON THEIR OWN.

Microsoft lied, cheated, stole and bullied their way to the top.
Google it!

Whether or not Chrome actually works, or ships, is up for grabs. There are MANY people who do NOT like the idea of having all their info floating in some cloud, out and beyond their DIRECT control.

Browsers have to get a whole lot better, too.

If high-speed wireless internet service were available everywhere, anytime, this might be less of an issue. Google has to be able to strike some kind of balance between times when you're online and times when it's impossible to connect to the internet, the "cloud" AND your data directly.

Jul 11, 09 - 09:23 am Comment from: qka

These are the same people who declared Apple dead in in the 90's.

They only expect the expected. Anything else, they cannot comprehend.

"Isn't Gmail still in beta???"
@silver surfer:

No -- See here...

http://tinyurl.com/lsrhzz

Jul 11, 09 - 09:46 am Comment from: qka

A very good analysis of what little has been revealed about Chrome, by John Gruber at Daring Fireball:

http://daringfireball.net/2009/07/chrome_os_context

Jul 11, 09 - 09:52 am Comment from: aka Christian

One area where I can imagine Chrome being used extensively is in schools. Imagine if many schools can replace desktop machines running expensive Windows and expensive Office with super-cheap netbooks running free Chrome which interacts flawlessly with free Google Apps. My district could save literally tens of thousands of dollars per year and maybe hire back some of the school librarians they cut from the elementary schools.

By the way, anyone have the number of the girl who modeled for the Evony ad running on MDN? I think I need a personal portrait session with her...

RE aka Christian: "Imagine if many schools can replace desktop machines running expensive Windows and expensive Office with super-cheap netbooks"

Or imagine them not needing to replace the hardware they already have. People can be far more productive on a normal sized system then what they could accomplish on a miniscule netbook. The biggest concern the entire (Windows PC) industry has now, is customers not needing to upgrade their systems. Both, hardware manufacturers and Microsoft need the upgrade cycle to maintain their "growth." If customers start upgrading their OS for free, then the industry would see a huge loss across the board.

Jul 11, 09 - 10:28 am Comment from: aka Christian

Good point, Michael. Of course, our Microsoft-certified I.T. personnel will attempt to block any use of any o.s. other than Microsoft products on either laptops or desktops as long as they are connected to the network. With laptops using cloud computing, I think we can bypass the network altogether in a stealth campaign. Now is the perfect time to try, since we'll have to re-train both staff and students on Windows 7 when we implement it anyway, which is supposed to happen next year, or something. Like many others, we've wiped Vista from all purchased machines in the last two years and downgraded them to XP. What a bizzaro world we live in.

I don't believe for one second that Google is in trouble with Apple over this. This is similar to when Ross Perot ran for President. He didn't take a ton of votes, but the majority came from Bush supporters, allowing Clinton to win with nowhere near 50%. If Chrome can garner 20% of Microsoft's market, it will help even out the market, which will lead to companies making more software for OSX and/or chrome. In the short term it may take to market from 90%-10% to 70%-15%-15%. This can only help Apple.

"Windows is changing the default search in browsers from Google to Bing.

Just goes to show how low Microsoft will go."

With all the things wrong at M$, this is you complaint? What did you expect them to do? It makes perfect sense and it's smart.

On another note.... on my website, I see a big shift. I used to get 80% traffice from IE, it's now usually split even between IE, FF, and Safari.

"Microsoft in June saw usage of its new search engine increase an average 25% a week sequentially through the month."

Useless statistics. This would be true if they had one user the first week, and then two the second week, and so on. What are the actual numbers? How does that compare to competitors?

This will divide the mac users. There will be mac users that are zealots, and mac users whom genuinely want a better product than the crap given by redmond.

I can't see whats wrong with Google making a better product than Apple or Microsoft, in fact good on them. We need good products out there, not forced shit ...

I agree with with GizmoDan. 25% of next to nothing is still next to nothing. Failure to provide actual numbers tells me this piece at Barron's was written by a M$ shill.

Jul 11, 09 - 01:18 pm Comment from: ichi

i was sorta happy for M$ to sort of died sleeping, not to be woken up!

Jul 11, 09 - 01:18 pm Comment from: ElderNorm

@ Silver Surfer.

I call troll alert. "Google is not much different then M$. BTW MDN has a love fest with Google. " OUCH Troll big time.

And I call "Dufuss Alert" on the author. MS ships with the computer and many are too lazy or uninformed to change anything. OK. But........ All it takes is Dell and HP offering a cheaper computer (OS is free???) starting with netbooks and moving right up the line.

What happens then??? These computers work fine with Google apps and maybe even Apple aps.... Just a thought.

Can you say world changing event??

en (lost in dreamy thought)

Google Chrome OS doesn't have to replace Windows to be successful, it only has to find it's place in the market. Look at Apple, they don't sell more macs than PCs but they have a profitable place in the market. That's what Google will need to find.

Jul 11, 09 - 01:43 pm Comment from: Gordon Horne

I realize it's just semantics, but I think the author makes a poor word choice in 'traction'. I know what Savitz is trying to say, and 'traction' is time honoured jargon, but does it really fit here?

In a sliding market, Apple's sales are falling less than Windows box assemblers. Microsoft is spinning its wheels with Vista. The referents of 'traction' don't really fit the situation. 'Presence' isn't a good choice either. Apple and OS X have a presence far out of proportion to market share. Apple is the mimmoth in the room.

I think Savitz would have done better to be explicit. "Other operating systems exist, but none have the installed base of Windows or the number of OEMs using it."

Analysts are grown up children that had no imagination and thick glasses.

Seriously, the only reason they can be so consistently wrong is that they are trying to push the market for their own personal gain.

Jul 11, 09 - 02:56 pm Comment from: ichi

"The biggest concern the entire (Windows PC) industry has now, is customers not needing to upgrade their systems. Both, hardware manufacturers and Microsoft need the upgrade cycle to maintain their "growth." If customers start upgrading their OS for free, then the industry would see a huge loss across the board."

and that is probably the single-most reason Apple has branched out. (nevertheless that it's still "about the software stupid.")

Jul 11, 09 - 05:38 pm Comment from: Tommy Boy

@Kevin J. Weise: You couldn't tell that Savitz is a M$ shill just by reading that crappy article?

@Quad Core: I never check browser stats, but I just did for my website: almost 4k unique visitors in the past month, of whom 42.5% use IE. 34.8% Firefox, 17.9% Safari, 2.7% Chrome, 1.3% Mozilla, 0.5% Opera, 0.2% Camino with the balance split between in descending order between Opera Mini, Konqueror, Playstation 3, Palm 850, and Blazer.

Jul 11, 09 - 06:45 pm Comment from: Mr.Fergus

The boyz from Redmond are holding some thing in their hand alright, and it's not a better hand, it's crap. Redmond is on the way down and its future is clouded at best.

I see a lot of potential for Google's Chrome OS, especially for college students and the rest of the education market (teachers, computer labs, etc. etc.) as well as home use (nettop computers).

In world that is becoming ever more "connected," google and it's rich cache of net apps are clearly the way to go. Nothing compares to being able to share a document (paper, slidershow, etc) to work on together with your classmates or develop and refine study sheets before a test. Now the real question is how does google go about entering the business word, as the writer of this article has pointed out.

It'll be interesting to see how Apple responds to GCOS, as it's primarily aimed at the cheap "netbook" market, for now.

Jul 11, 09 - 10:46 pm Comment from: Not Bill

I think Mr. Savitz is predicting the future by looking at the past. While the odds might be in favor of the big staying big, it never lasts forever.

I see Google innovating and MS having trouble even copying well. The say 7 will be different. We will see. If it al least works well doing nothing new or innovative that will be a major accomplishment. Something Vista could not do.

Google says their motto is "Do no evil." Apple's may be "Change the world." MS has been "I don't care how we do it, just win."

Like most people and companies MS bends things in their perceived favor. This is not a good trait for a search engine. I would not trust them not to "bend" results back into their "universe."

Steve stayed true to his cause. If the Google boys can do so as well they just may open a "new world" in computing.

If one looks at past performance in innovation, it is all Google and no MS. I really do not see any reason why Google cannot do this; unless it is an internal organizational limitation. They will have to continue to build the culture. They need a Jobs demanding results and enforcing accountability, while following a vision.

The only real thinking done in the article I can to see is based upon the observation that people tend to stick to their OS. That seems to be very true. MS rode in on the back of IBM, became the needed standard, and remain so.

Will this be the disruptive technology that unseats MS? Time will tell.

Jul 12, 09 - 12:48 am Comment from: Brulek

Anything is better than the status quo (and spare us lame jokes about the band)...Nothing wrong with Google having a swipe at microsh*t because sure as sh*t sticks to a blanket, apple aren't going to move microsh*t around to much. A second front is good. It can't hurt.

Jul 12, 09 - 01:59 am Comment from: Ferf Muckmeyer

I still don't know what to make of all of this. The last time I can remember an alternative graphic operating system for consumers was Geoworks. It was for people who had PCs that didn't have the hardware requirements needed for Windows. At the time, it was pretty cool. But those were pre-Windows 95 days - literally when MS was grabbing market share (or stealing it) with Windows 3.0. Sadly that OS disappeared with little or no third party apps (but it was the first OS to run America Online, believe it or not).

Today things are completely different. Apple is hammering away at MS market share because their OS is so much better than Windows and consumers are sick of viruses, BSODs, and the steep learning curve MS demands. And even in a down economy, Apple isn't doing too bad - in fact, we can see that the new MBPs are selling like crazy. Imagine if we were on an upswing.

I don't know if Google has a shot at chipping away as MS market share, but for every player that comes on the scene that wants to develop a great OS running on Intel, the more MS has to worry about. So you have to give Google credit for their efforts. Vista was the biggest OS flop and even with the speed bump Windows 7 has, it still looks and acts like Vista. As many have stated, this may turn out to be a good thing. This move cements the notion that MS isn't infallible.

Jul 12, 09 - 02:43 am Comment from: hardmanb

"....It is folly. An OS that can only run web apps?"

I know that this is hard for a fellow computer user to realize, but the majority of people can do everything they want on an OS with web apps:

Shop, surf, word process, spreadsheets, research, download and store files and data, swap photos, email and use facebook, myspace, twitter, etc.

Very few people anymore really need a full powered, self-contained desktop.

@hardmanb:
I know what you're saying, and it's true to an extent, but I still think people rely on desktop computing power more than you might realise. For example, there's Flash player - will Chrome OS allow for that? It's a big part of the Web, whether we like it or not, and people rely on it. It may be fine for netbooks, I suppose, but it's not suitable for much else.

Jul 12, 09 - 01:56 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

Those of you who are hating on Bing...

It's actually quite good. You need to give it a fair chance.

After all, it isn't really Microsoft's. All they did was buy it.

@ Silverhawk
One of the best MDN posts in recent memory.

...

Chrome OS should really be thought about in the long term. Comparing what Google purports it to be in the first iteration with Windows (or, as the author did, gmail with Outlook - WTF was that?!?!) it useless. This is obviously the first volley in a long term strategy to bring a new OS into competition with Windows & OS X.

I do like the idea of a netbook specific OS to use as a start. It should give them experience, feedback, and time to develop a new OS that will compete with Windows and OS X. Though both Chrome OS and Android lag behind the Apple offereings, it seems to me that they understand that Apple's software is the key to their success in the current smartphone market and that this will segue into a critical long-term market of handheld computers. My iPhone is already superior to the desktop of my college days (a long time ago). In 5-10 yrs, will I really need laptop? Or will I simply be docking my iPhone at home and work? Google is getting into the OS business for that likely eventuality.

Bing?

Don't make me laugh.

Search for +"We're not happy until you're not happy" in Google:
631 hits.

Search for +"We're not happy until you're not happy" in Bing:
275 000 000 hits.

Twohundred-and-seventyfive freakin' MILLION hits.

There should be no doubt what so ever that Bing is just as crappy as everything else M$ "creates".