Column : The final battle for our computers

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

: That Google would eventually launch an Operating System has been rumoured for years—Rick Skrenta of Topix wrote about Google running its own large, custom computer, with its own operating system, which blogger Jason Kottke nicknamed GooOS. Kottke said then that Google isn’t worried about competitors in the search space—Microsoft with Live Search and Yahoo Search—but they really want to take on Windows.

Five years later, those words appear to have been prophetic: Microsoft Windows, which dominates the Operating System market, will have its first major competitor after Linux in the second half of 2010. Kottke’s 2004 statement about Google using open source Operating System Linux as a starting point is also remarkable, since that’s exactly what Google has done.

Being open source, like competitor Linux, Google Chrome OS will allow web developers the freedom to create their own versions, and develop software that will run on it. This announcement comes at a time when Microsoft is gearing up to launch Windows 7 operating system, which is expected to rescue the world from the clutches of memory hogging and painful-to-use Windows Vista.

This isn’t the first battle between the Google and Microsoft: indeed, several flanks have opened up over the past few years. A few months ago, Microsoft announced the launch of its web search engine Bing, taking on Google in its area of dominance. The buzz around Bing was significant. It’s unlikely Bing will overtake Google Search in the near future, but advertising that goes to Bing should be viewed as business that Google lost.

Nine months ago, Google encroached upon an area dominated by Microsoft by launching its own web browser—Google Chrome. The web browser market had been dominated by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which ships as the default browser with Microsoft Windows, with open source browser Firefox as a distant second, and Opera as third. I’ve found Chrome to be more intuitive and less cluttered than the rest, though Opera comes a close second. Some studies on browser usage have suggested that Chrome is ahead of Opera.

In the instant messaging space, Google launched Google Talk, which took on MSN Messenger, and Google Documents offered users a free alternative to Microsoft Office, just as Google Apps offer a free alternative to Microsoft Outlook. Through its Google Pack, which provides free software like browsers, anti-virus, media players etc, Google also supported Microsoft Office alternatives like Star Office.