Google vs Microsoft

Wednesday, 08 July 2009 10:00

So, Google has announced it is developing an operating system for personal computers.

I'm all for competition in a market dominated by a product that is sold knowing it does not work as it supposed to and frankly drives me nuts.

But I'm less enthusiastic about a product designed (at least initially) to "to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds".

A hardware/software combo product (like netbooks) that does this for people who only do stuff online is all very well, but Google will need to think deeper if they want to seriously challenge Microsoft's operating systems. Window's may have been designed in an era before the internet, but a lot of things we did then - we still do now. And cloud computing is a) still hotly debated and b) yet to take off.

A great deal of what I do on my PC has nothing to do with the web and I have no desire to have to be online to do it. I want to be an individual - isolated in my cocoon thank you very much.

Maybe doing everything online is the way of the future but I think that future is a way off yet, and it will be one greatly more concerned about security, privacy and individual identity. We may not want to be permanently and inextricably connected as a small cog in a very big system. You could argue that Google's thinking is based on current reality and assumptions that could significantly change.

Guess we'll see...