IT Curmudgeon

The announcement of the development of Google's new Chrome OS has brought a hail of enthusiastic comments. I'd like to put a deeper perspective on the discussion.

Many see this as a Google vs. Microsoft competition, and are applying their personal biases to the evaluation of how it will end. It isn't a simple situation, though. A battle of titans is not likely to be a war of attrition, but rather a high-stakes game where the placement of the chips on the table may make a huge difference.

Many remember the OS's of the past, many of which had very promising features but failed for a variety of reasons. Some may recall VAX VMS, Amiga, and Metaphor's object oriented system that was bought by IBM. Some of these OS's were under-capitalized and too far ahead of their time, like Amiga and Metaphor. Others were not sufficiently competitive. OS/2 was supported by IBM but still missed the threshold of marketability.

OS/2 is an interesting example of a good OS that did not survive. There are some ATM applications that still run it but it is essentially dead. Some of the notable milestones in the history of OS/2 are as follows:

• IBM hires Microsoft to create the OS of the future, OS/2, aimed at servers and large PC's
• Microsoft works to create it's own OS targeted for small and middle-tier PC's, Windows 3.0, followed quickly by version 3.1, "the one that worked"
• Microsoft delivers OS/2 1.2 to IBM, which is written in 286 assembler, and is difficult or nearly impossible to upgrade to the new 386 chips
• IBM severs relations with Microsoft on the OS front and develops OS/2 2.0 from scratch
• IBM still continues to profitably sell PC's which have Microsoft Windows installed on them
• IBM releases OS/2 v 2.0 and 3.0, as Microsoft releases Windows NT

In a civil action by the Department of Justice and the state of New York, Microsoft was found to have used predatory practices to prevent OS/2 and other operating systems from having a market share by charging computer hardware manufacturers for the Windows OS even if their machines did not have Windows installed. See the court's finding of facts in the case.

Technical discussions of the OS/2 features and shortcomings are diminished by the fact that business practices prevented computers from being sold with the promising IBM OS. One could argue that these practices held back early versions of Linux, as well.

Ok, flash forward, back to the present day: Chrome OS vs. Windows. If the playing field had been level between Windows and OS/2, it might be argued that Windows was making a good bet by betting on "lower-end" hardware. Recall that OS/2 was aimed at higher-end servers and PC's, and because of that, it was somewhat less ubiquitous. Vista recently made the same platform targeting mistake, among many many tragic Vista mistakes, by having restrictive hardware requirements. Windows 7 intends to address some of these problems, but Chrome OS is targeted at notebook PC's and a lower-end hardware platform.

Microsoft has been down-playing lower-end notebook PC's and is favoring more expensive PC's that will favor Windows 7. My instincts tell me that lower-end notebook PC's will have a growth curve that will make them very popular and will allow new features to be added to them, causing a strongly positive growth niche to be created. Microsoft, by comparison, is now aiming for the higher end computers that would be favored by gamers and software developers.

Based on these considerations, I would predict the following:

• Chrome OS will gain a foothold that will not be easily forced out because of Google's size and strength and the fact that they are not in the hardware business
• Microsoft will respond to the challenge by developing a competing offering for the low-end computing platforms
• Google has placed a bet on a very strong opening in the marketplace, and may be able to capitalize it very well, as they have in other areas