There has been quite some discussion going on over at my favourite blog Read/Write Web following Emre Sokullu's article GoogleOS: What to expect. I believe that, regardless of the much criticized misapprehension of the Ubuntu licence, Emre's post is quite representative of a line of thought that has lead to a lot of speculation among the web-savy for the last year or so. In this post, I would like briefly to summarize this line of thought and outline why I do not entirely agree with its basic premises. Disclaimer: This is going to be more of an essay than a short blog post.

The convergence of the Desktop and the Internet

Think back a few years: Back then, it was quite clear to the average computer user what one did on one's own computer (creating or editing content, using applications, etc.) and what one did on the Internet (researching information, downloading or publishing content, etc.). As time went by, the line between desktop activities and Internet activities became more and more blurred. If you look at the average computer user today, can he or she tell whether an application is using the resources (storage and computing power) of his or her own computer or whether it's calling a web service? If he or she has got a new task to confront – such as keeping up to date with a couple of information sources via RSS –, is it clear whether to resort to Desktop applications or Internet applications? As you can see, the convergence of the Desktop and the Internet has been happening all along, bit by bit, in our everyday lives without most people even noticing.

The evolution of the Google-Microsoft antagonism

Back in the days when it there was a clear line between what the Desktop is for and what the Internet is for, Google and Microsoft did not really need to care about each other. Microsoft was the king of the Desktop where the main challenge is to have an umbrella for all the basic tasks that a desktop computer has to perform: connecting to peripherals, managing different applications, connecting to the network, commonly referred to as an operating system. Google was the (emerging) king of the Internet where the main challenge is to structure and organize the wealth of information held by the World Wide Web, commonly referred to as search. There was not much overlap between these two worlds.

People often argue that Google and Microsoft are heading for a faceoff simply because they are the two most powerful players in the field. However, just as importantly, the convergence and merging of their realms described above is forcing them into confrontation.

In how far is Vista a reaction to the threat posed by Google?

It is often heard that some aspects of the new Windows Vista, with its closer integration with the web, are either a direct challenge to Google or an answer to the threat posed by it to Microsoft. In fact, with desktop search (Google Desktop) and online Office applications (gmail, Google Docs aka Writley and Spreadsheets), Google has already started intruding into Microsoft's world. Clearly, with Vista, Microsoft is threatening Google directly by pushing MSN and Windows Live as alternatives to Google's search and personalized homepage.

The “GoogleOS” line of thought

A lot of people speculate that Google will strike back not only by positioning its Web Office applications as direct competitors to MS Office, but also by releasing either a WebOS or by partnering with a competing Desktop OS. It seems logical, but I think these people are missing one important point – apart from some technical limitations: This is how Microsoft would react if it were Google. I believe Google has a different philosophy and will, therefore, act differently – or should act differently lest it forget its roots and the sort of culture that has made it strong.

Before, allow me a brief digression to the idea of the WebOS.

The Web OS is coming…

The idea of a Web OS has been around for some time now and means roughly that as more and more desktop applications move to, or are replicated on, the Internet, the desktop itself with its look and feel will end up being replicated on the Internet. There are quite a few contenders, most of them start-ups, that have already staked their claim to this domain. Since with the more and more wide-spread adoption of web services, it becomes easier to integrate web applications and use them concurrently from one page, this is actually a promising field. At the same time, core OS tasks such as storage (Amazon S3, GDrive) and computing power (grid computing) are already moving from the local machine to the web. With the increasing importance of mobile devices, it is also important to note that, as an advantage compared to traditional operating systems, such solutions are fairly device-independent.

Therefore, some argue that in the future, the only role of the local system will be to connect to the Internet, open a browser and otherwise limit itself to the most basic functions. In a way, it will be like going back to the time of light-weight terminals connected to a mainframe, but in a new way.

…or is it?

Others say that this won't happen because far too many uses of a traditional OS make more sense on the actual machine. According to them, the convergence will happen rather in the form of a closer integration of locally installed operating systems with the Web than them being replaced by webified operating systems in most of their core functions.

I find both of these predictions interesting, but they miss one point: When the first cars were produced, they had a striking resemblance with horse carriages. Carriages were what people knew, and therefore, the “look-and-feel” of the first cars was modelled on them. However, as we know, cars proved to be more than just motor-powered horse carriages, and they soon developed their own, new, unique look and feel.

Likewise, I doubt that the new era of computing will be dominated by either a Ajax-powered rich browser experience or by a more connective desktop. I believe something new will evolve that we cannot imagine yet.

Back to Google

However, let's return to our main topic: Will Google, as many expect, react to Windows Vista by either releasing its own operating system or by turning its Personalized Homepage into a fully fledged web OS? I believe it should not (and will not because they are smart). Messrs Brin and Page should rather look at, and bet on, the sort of culture that has made them strong at the start.

The Google Culture: Focus

In a video, Marissa Mayer once related quite a telling story: Apparently, in the very beginning, Larry Page and Sergey Brin did not plan to start a company. They just wanted to sell their search technology. Their selling point was basically that they had devised a search technology that was 20% better than what had been existing so far. Nobody was interested – your technology may well be 20% better, they were told, but ours is good enough; nobody needs better search. All they could do was starting their own company.

As history shows, this 20% was quite relevant to users. Without much marketing, Google increased its market share more and more by mere word-of-mouth. Their success is built on doing one thing, and doing it really well, so well that people would switch to their technology even in the absence of any kind of marketing strategy.

I believe this also explains why a lot of people, including me, are quite sympathetic of Google: their success is built on substance rather than strategy. Obviously, as in every fairly large corporation, strategy came into play as time went by (their alliance with Firefox or the YouTube acquisition which was as much the acquisition of a faithful community as the one of a product). But more importantly, it is built on the ability to focus on one broad, but clear mission: organizing the world's information and making it quickly accessible to everyone.

Lately, it may not seem too obvious, but once you think about it, you realize that Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations as well as video are merely means of accessing, editing and publishing information. Think about Google Print or their efforts in machine translation. The common denominator remains one well defined goal: Organizing information to make it easy to access.

The Microsoft Culture: Breadth

Microsoft's merit, in comparison, is to have brought a lot of different things to desktop computing, by doing a lot of different things well enough. Their strength is exactly the opposite of Google's strength: covering everything, rather than excelling at one thing. It would be hard to sum their mission up as concisely as Google's.

Web 2.0 is different

What some people miss in my opinion is that the world of online computing is fundamentally different from the world of desktop computing. And I believe it favours Google's approach.

On the desktop computer, you bought and installed a product and usually it was only when you had to upgrade anyway that you considered switching to another product. The consumer took one purchase decision and the cost of reconsidering that decision was relatively high. With online applications, you subscribe to a product and whenever something better comes up, you can decide to switch in a matter of days. As can be seen from a lot of blogs and forum posts, users are very conscious about data portability; therefore, if you try to lock them into your product, you won't even take off. Furthermore, it will be easier to combine several heterogeneous solutions. Thanks to this increased user mobility, any product which is just good enough, but not excellent is under threat to a much higher degree than previously, and offering a little bit of everything in a convenient package does not work that well any more. We won't need to concentrate the solutions to our basic personal computing requirements such as desktop interface, storage, file management, computing power, publishing solutions, networking capabilities, etc. in one hand.

As a result, I am convinced that Google won't be the Microsoft of a new era of computing because the new era of computing will not have its Microsoft. Google may well be the most important player, but it could never be as threatening to small players as Microsoft was on the desktop. I think reacting to Vista “the Microsoft way” would be a huge mistake for Google.

How Google should stay true to its roots.

I am quite a happy Google user. I have my personalized homepage and also use some of the rather new products such as Docs and Spreadsheets. Especially, as a linguist, I really love some Labs projects such as Google Sets. In addition, I am planning on writing some small tools for myself that will probably call the Google API which seems fairly simple. What would I do if an operating system were too insistent in its trying to discourage me from using these services? Simple: I would not use it.

I might not be the typical computer user, yet, as Google has proven at its very inception, users are often smarter than a lot of people think. Yes, in spite of all the shiny Altavista and Yahoo! ads, they noticed that Google's search was better at quickly retrieving the information they were looking for and so they used Google. Once again, if Google proves the wild WebOS speculations wrong and keeps focussing on its core strength – search, including local and mobile search as well as book search, as well as organizing and structuring information in all imaginable forms, including Office documents, –, then there will be no need to release any Google-friendly or Google-branded operating system since people will keep using Google whatever their OS tries to suggest to them. On the contrary, if Google were to allow itself to be distracted by the pursuit of some anti-Microsoft GoogleOS for some tactical reasons, thereby dispersing its energies, it would risk far more than it could win. It is up to Google, once again, to prove that quality can win over strategy.

Back to the top of this page

Categories: Web Development and Programming

Keywords/tags: google microsoft googleos webos web os web 2.0 web desktop

Permalink | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (1)

Trackbacks

Trackback URL for this entry:
http://christianflury.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/20

» Home » CV » Skills » Blog » Docs » Contact

English Français Deutsch

Christian Flury – World 0.1

Christian Flury

World 0.1

© Christian Flury, 2002—2008

     

Except where otherwise noted, this site is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.