Chrome OS

[DemoCoder]

There was also the JavaPC stuff, and Netscape had a NetPC thing as well. The NetPCs were far more limited than even Android, the equivalent really of X-Terminals, but running Java locally. They had the immediate problem that Java was a slow memory hog prior to Hotspot, network bandwidth was low, and there was no fallback (escape) from the sandbox.

Even Android allows escape to native, and Chrome will offer that escape, as well as NativeClient.

 

[willardjuice]

You don't have to, it's a library you dolt, no different than MFC, ATL, and any other junk you have on windows. You have the choice of using library functions, or coding directly. Your commentary is quite silly, asserting that developers don't want to use libraries. You're beloved KDE and GNOME are perfect examples of this. LibQt in particular, the foundation of KDE, was a multi-OS windowing kit.

The point was I can write C/C++ code for Win32 (or whatever platform) and know it will work with relative certainty (and if there are bugs, they are probably mine). I don't have to worry about what libraries, browser, etc that I can or cannot use. I don't have to sit there and think, hey is this my bug, dojo's bug, a browser's bug, etc.

The games industry is full of middleware and abstraction

Because there is a need for middleware, not by choice. That's why console games are "closer to metal".

The fact that Microsoft is bothering at all to do an online version of their apps, even if they continue to sell desktop versions in parallel, implies they have a substantial fear that online cloud based applications could capture significant market share.

Or perhaps it's a nice addition to their Office products. They added Open Office compatibility in Office 2007 SP2, but I doubt they believe Open Office is going to capture significant market share anytime soon.

Funny, it's more powerful than a typical PC running MS applications in recent history.

That wasn't the point. Regardless of how much power a phone has (the general lack of power on phones was icing on the cake), without a keyboard/mouse/etc, a phone will never be as productive as a desktop. Meaning the applications will generally be simpler and thus fit in the "web application" mold better (think trying to do google docs on an iphone and Office on an iphone).

Stripping down a Linux distro to be lean-and-mean to run on low-end hardware is just what the doctor ordered.

No it quite isn't. And thus why this discussion will go in circles and is pointless to continue. You seem to want simplicity and speed from your operating system while I am perfectly happy with the features and speed from my current operating system/applications. I'm completely fine with the status quo. I guess we'll see who's right in a few years...

 

[DemoCoder]

The point was I can write C/C++ code for Win32 (or whatever platform) and know it will work with relative certainty (and if there are bugs, they are probably mine). I don't have to worry about what libraries, browser, etc that I can or cannot use. I don't have to sit there and think, hey is this my bug, dojo's bug, a browser's bug, etc.

You have got to be kidding. Have you ever written any non-trivial applications on Windows? Writing code in C/C++ doesn't magically eliminate DLL Hell, buggy windows APIs, bad drivers, people running different service packs, different versions of windows.

Because there is a need for middleware, not by choice. That's why console games are "closer to metal".

There are two reasons why people use middleware. One, to reduce high level work. The second, to develop for multi-platform titles. You program close to the metal when you're doing an exclusive only, or for some reason, you need to do a rewrite port.

No non-trivial apps these days are written without linking in a dozen or so libraries, many originating with third parties. That's why open source is important, because inevitably there will be bugs in these libraries, and diagnosing them and patching them is extremely difficult without source. The idea that people only deal with the compiler and ANSI C and write pure apps that only have bugs within their own code is so utterly naive that it could only be written by a student who has done nothing but student projects.

Even MIT has tossed out 'pure' student projects, and now emphasizes students develop in an environment/ecosystem of code, gluing it together, with often buggy or bad specifications/documentations, because that's what life is like in the real world of programming.

Meaning the applications will generally be simpler and thus fit in the "web application" mold better (think trying to do google docs on an iphone and Office on an iphone).

Web applications aren't neccessarily "simpler". Mint and Quicken Online offer more functionality than the desktop versions.

You seem to want simplicity and speed from your operating system while I am perfectly happy with the features and speed from my current operating system/applications. I'm completely fine with the status quo. I guess we'll see who's right in a few years...

I want productivity, period. The web has made me far more productive, since the mid 80s when I started using the internet on early Unix systems, up to today. Even then, I was extremely productive with terminal/curses based apps. I could do far more, with greater ease and outcome, with TeX/LaTeX using nothing more than Emacs over VT100 dialup than most students using Word today.

 

[3dilettante]

And my point is, it doesn't anymore than increased web usage does. Even if Chrome OS didn't exist (and it doesn't yet), more and more applications moving online undermines Microsoft, and helps players who majority revenue derives from online usage.

Helping multiple newcomers is a plus.
How many of these online-based players is a multibillion dollary behemoth with branding so established that it has become an element of popular vernacular?

But Chrome OS specifically doesn't aggregate power, in the sense that Google won't control it, anymore than Google controls Python, even though it employs Guido (it's inventor) and pays for its upkeep.

It's not called Google (tm) Python.

What we do have are Google Chrome, Google Android, GMail, Google AdSense, Google Apps, Google Wave, Google News, Google Library, Google Health, Youtube (not Google Youtube, but at least this one is a trademark part of the popular consciousness that Google owns and controls completely).

Any one of these in isolation is a worthy and positive endeavor.
The network effects and inevitable emergent interactions between them and world at large are where concern comes in.
This is not a programmatic problem or a closed/open source worry.

Chrome is open source, the majority of it is derived from WebKit, which started as an Apple project, which came from KHTML, an open source HTML component from the KDE project, itself originating from a commercial company which makes the libQt library.

And?
So what?
Do you think the hard part about gaining market and mindshare in the information economy is cobbling together source code?

Chrome OS would simply be Chrome, plus a few Javascript libraries tacked on and a window manager. It simply won't be capable of being owned and controlled by Google unless Google tries to release it under a weird license that somehow packages opensource Chromium with non-opensource Javascript libraries (which are text files)

Microsoft worried overly long about who owned what code, and its problems as of late stem in part from this outdated thinking.
The provenance of the code is not where the power is derived.

This thread is about Chrome OS. And my point being, whatever hysterical fears you have about some future Google behemoth, Chrome OS is simply irrelevent to them.

If successful, the Google Chrome OS would bring its branding presence to the fastest-growing point of access to the internet, netbook-level systems, with possible future variants that could scale higher.

I see the potential for an unhealthy systemic monoculture.
Any individual initiative might not have a significant potential for problems, but the collective weight and interactions of an integration almost the entire process of the information economy can lead to unforseen side effects.
As a corporation of some competence, we can count on most of those not affecting Google negatively.

It can turn a good portion of the internet into a form of mill town, where the company defines and skims from the means of work, living, and of consumption.
Any number of players could try the same thing, but Google thus far has done a far better job of it.

You are free to characterize my conerns as hysteria, but understand that from where I sit, I take your reading from the secret internal Google employee pamphlet with a massive grain of salt.

I'm in some amount disturbed by the picture of the psychology of Google's internals.
It has hints of cult, crusade, and Stalinist propoganda machine mixed with academic naivete, with some of the employees sounding like Google Pod People.

 

[N00b]

There is a fundamental difference between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft want me to buy their software. Fine with me. Google wants my data. Not so fine.

With Microsoft I have control of my data. It stays on my harddisk or on my servers that run microsoft software. There is no way microsoft can access my data without me knowning. If they would implement some hidden remote access feature, people would find out.

Enter Google. Google wants to store my data on their servers. I have no control whatsoever wether they access it, analyze it or use it for whatever purpose. There is no one who can control what they do with the data. This is what bothers me. Google is a very serious threat to privacy and by that it is a threat to democracy itself.

 

[Scott_Arm]

There is a fundamental difference between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft want me to buy their software. Fine with me. Google wants my data. Not so fine.

With Microsoft I have control of my data. It stays on my harddisk or on my servers that run microsoft software. There is no way microsoft can access my data without me knowning. If they would implement some hidden remote access feature, people would find out.

Enter Google. Google wants to store my data on their servers. I have no control whatsoever wether they access it, analyze it or use it for whatever purpose. There is no one who can control what they do with the data. This is what bothers me. Google is a very serious threat to privacy and by that it is a threat to democracy itself.

Windows Live is pretty much the same thing as Google Apps. I'd say in the online space, they're pretty much the same, but Google is obviously more successful. Doesn't Microsoft own a big part of Facebook? If you want to talk about having control of our data, you're really splitting hairs when you compare the two.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Not really. Google's entire business is based upon the parsing and storage of data. And people just have to have faith/belief that Google will remain altruistic with the power they have if they end up controlling the majority of information processing, distribution, storage and presentation as they would like in the future.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google already has access to more information than any government in the world.

For MS, it's only an ancilliary business model to facilitate their core business. Although I'm sure they are envious of what Google has been able to achieve, I don't think they are quite ready to drop their core business model.

Although their cloud computing initiative combined with the various Live services are an indication that they are serious about moving in that direction.

Regards,
SB

 

[rpg.314]

I don't get it. Why the hell is google's webcrawling more intrusive than facebook? Facebook consumes (and demands) far far more personal data than google ever will. And there is evidence to suggest that you have far less control over facebook than over google. Why the hell does anyone make a website for? To look at it in the night all by himself and masturbate? You make it because you want others to see it. And google does a better job of seeing and understanding than any one else. I haven't seen anyone work himself up over facebook? What do people here think of facebook's commitment to altruism?

 

[3dilettante]

I'd think it unwise to really trust Facebook, or the Facebook OS, Facebook AdSense, FaceMail, Facebook Wave, FaceBook Library, Facebook Health, Facebook Browser, Facebook Desktop, Facebook Apps, Facebook Android... and so on.

 

[DemoCoder]

The difference between Google and Facebook is one of both actual deeds as well as mission.

Facebook collects deeply personal data, and their mission is to use this to target ads. That is, if they know a friend of yours just bought a skateboard, they figure you might be interested in one too. On top of this, is social network activity stream integration, where Facebook gets third party sites to post transactions back to facebook. Remember the brouhaha over Amazon posting notices to Facebook about which books you've bought? Talk about privacy violation.

Anyway, this is Facebook's stated mission to make money, they are deeply invested in it.

By contrast, Google sees themselves first and foremost as a search engine used to index publicly available data, data that is available to anyone. That's their core mission, and their monetization strategy is based off of targeting ads at what you're looking at or searching for.

The biggest privacy violation here is keeping search logs. But you don't need to be "logged in" to Google to use it, and you can search in relative anonymity, especially if you disallow cookies for google. I long ago disabled Web Search History for example.

Sure, one can claim that Google *could be* dangerous in the future, and could massively violate your privately, but the reality is, Facebook DOES lead to privacy violations and has already twice faced community pressure to back down over behavior targeting.

In contrast, there has been no concerted backlash against Google, because Google by and large has not acted to violate user privacy in a big way, or to abuse them with behavioral targeting.


3d's argument boils down to "beware of big stuff with lots of money". Well yeah, and? That tells us nothing about which companies we should target regulations, trust busting, or consumer concern at.

The issue is real vs imagined. Facebook knows who you are, what you do, and who your friends are. Google knows what you're searching for, and by convention, people are far more likely to use real credentials on Facebook than Google, so my democoder@gmail.com account tells Google nothing about me, but I can assure you, my Facebook account can be used to know my entire life.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Not really. Google's entire business is based upon the parsing and storage of data. And people just have to have faith/belief that Google will remain altruistic with the power they have if they end up controlling the majority of information processing, distribution, storage and presentation as they would like in the future.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google already has access to more information than any government in the world.

For MS, it's only an ancilliary business model to facilitate their core business. Although I'm sure they are envious of what Google has been able to achieve, I don't think they are quite ready to drop their core business model.

Although their cloud computing initiative combined with the various Live services are an indication that they are serious about moving in that direction.

Regards,
SB

Does the business model really matter? They offer services that collect the same level of information as Google. They have their own search engine with Bing, they have Windows Live, some share of Facebook, Xbox Live etc. They may not be as successful as Google in doing those things, but the potential for abuse is really the same.

The online space is weird. I have a certain distrust for sharing information online. I keep as little information as possible on my facebook. It doesn't have my work history or anything. Services that store your resume online make me nervous. Unfortunately, everything is going online because it offers huge convenience to the user to be able to use these tools from anywhere on any device. You kind of jump in or you don't.

Back to Google Chrome OS, I still don't know how this would increase Google's realm of control over information. The applications are all web apps that are designed to work with any standards compliant browser. They aren't Google Chrome OS apps. They're just web apps. You can use them anywhere, from any browser that supports them. It's just a platform. It doesn't lock people into google. They can use Google Chrome OS to check their hotmail just as easily as gmail. The whole thing is built on a web browser. It definitely encourages the use of web apps vs native apps, but in the end that's where things are going anyways.

Edit: If anything popularity might encourage better web apps that use open standards, which will simplify and improve the web browser market.

 

[3dilettante]

The difference between Google and Facebook is one of both actual deeds as well as mission.

Facebook is intrusive, but its domain is for now localized to the content and users in the site. It has its domain at the point of social information generation and consumption, with advertisements based on its control there.

Google has a news aggregator, a beta health records initiative, library project, email service, video service, search engine, application suite, browser, online advertisements, and eventually more than one OS product.

People don't turn on their computer and see Facebook, it doesn't bring them system functionality, and it does not bring them applications, page rank, browsers, and so on.

Each point in the user process for using their computer, interfacing with the web, or trying to make money from it, Google has or will have a presence, and it is gaining influence in all of them.

This isn't just horizontal integration, nor is it purely vertical integration.

This isn't integration that merely provides manufacturing synergies, or increases marketshare.
It encapsulates the full range of consumer interaction with the digital realm.
That means someone at any point in the process: signing in, searching for information or news, getting applications, trying to make revenue, will find that there is one player in the system that is simultanously well ahead of them and securely behind them.

Think you have a workaround at one level? Good job, just five more points of entry to shore up.

I rather like the big players staying stuck in their fiefdoms, because at least then there are portions of the process not within their hands.

The Google's emerging paradigm, that Microsoft is also trying emulate, leaves individuals and small emerging players at a disadvantage because they cannot move to a different stage of usage without finding out that whatever countermeasures they employ will need to protect them from the front and rear.

Nor is it preferable to have Google and some Google competitor (evolved Microsoft?) fighting for market share amongst the full cycle of digital activity, either.
That still leaves the common pool of small players as a football to be kicked around by behemoths, with no individual-level recourse.

It is not just privacy, but the free function of the general public in their use of the internet, online business, and information gathering.

The biggest privacy violation here is keeping search logs. But you don't need to be "logged in" to Google to use it, and you can search in relative anonymity, especially if you disallow cookies for google. I long ago disabled Web Search History for example.

There's Gmail's eternal retention of deleted data, which if the goverment did it would be considered a form of siezure.
There's Google's health record initiative, which exists in a legal limbo that is not as stringently regulated privacy-wise as other health-care software products.

3d's argument boils down to "beware of big stuff with lots of money". Well yeah, and? That tells us nothing about which companies we should target regulations, trust busting, or consumer concern at.

That's a nice rule to start with.
There are other qualifiers.
Big stuff that resents being told to reign itself in.
Big stuff with money that wants to open new open fields of competition where it is the richest and first player.
Big stuff whose positions show little to no introspection.

Big stuff with money and plenty of zeal should be eyed with suspicion. Every zealot thinks what they do isn't evil.

 

[DemoCoder]

Facebook is intrusive, but its domain is for now localized to the content and users in the site. It has its domain at the point of social information generation and consumption, with advertisements based on its control there.

Umm, no. Facebook's "Facebook Connect" platform as well as it's "Beacon" system are sticking their tendrils into tens of thousands of websites. Facebook Connect is singlehandedly beating down the OpenID initiative to become the defacto "Single Sign On" API for the web. That means, potentially in the future, you won't be able to consume services on a major third party website without logging in through Facebook.

Beacon is Facebook's system to get personal data from third party sites funneled back to FB. Initially, it was opt-out, a ruckus ensued, and Facebook changed it to opt-in, but then an investigation turned up the fact that even if you opted-out, third parties would still forward your personal data to FB. For example, if you rented a movie on Netflix, this private information would be shared with Facebook.

Finally, Facebook is launching a new payment system designed to compete with PayPal, and it will work through the existing Facebook Connect system, so that third party sites will be encouraged to accept payment for goods and services through "Facebook Credits"

Now, do you really think Facebook is a siloed website that has no impact outside of its domain? They have a Firehose data feed from ~50 top level web properties into their Beacon system telling them everything you do, in real time. What movies you rent, what things you buy, what music you listen to.

People don't turn on their computer and see Facebook, it doesn't bring them system functionality, and it does not bring them applications, page rank, browsers, and so on.

Facebook doesn't bring applications? Um, might I remind you that Facebook's F8 platform has over 60,000 applications, applications with far more personal information about you than Google Docs/Spreadsheets, and that collaborative productivity applications also exist on FB as well?

People don't turn on their computer and see Google. The majority of people turn on their computer and see Microsoft: IE as default browser, MS as default portal. Hell, Microsoft Passport was integrated at the OS level in Windows to provide login via MSN/Hotmail account.

And for 200 million people world wide, apparently, they turn on their computer and the first thing they type is either "Facebook.com", or they launch a Twitter client.

It encapsulates the full range of consumer interaction with the digital realm.
That means someone at any point in the process: signing in, searching for information or news, getting applications, trying to make revenue, will find that there is one player in the system that is simultanously well ahead of them and securely behind them.

And yet, despite all this, Google is somehow unable to beat Facebook at social networking, or Twitter at messaging, or Yahoo at email (Gmail is not the #1 web mail service), or Zoho at office apps, and on and on. According to you, they should have an unfair advantage in integration, but the reality is, switching costs on the internet are so low, and it's so easy to move your data around, that there is little lock-in syngery effect.

I rather like the big players staying stuck in their fiefdoms, because at least then there are portions of the process not within their hands.

I don't. I prefer open standards and let everyone implement all of them. I hate this viewpoint that you should prohibit integration because it makes usability AWFUL. Sign-on a great example.

Passwords are well known as a total anti-pattern in the security field. They're a terrible technique for authentication, but worse, requiring everyone to have 2 dozen of them for 2 dozen fiefdoms decreases overall security, and subjects users to the terrible experience of signing up for, and entering their profile information dozens of times. (BTW, Google, unlike its competitors, supports OpenID)

Then, if I'm on site A, and I need information from Site B, I face enormous obstacles.

The industry is trying to work around this problem with OpenID, oAuth, Portable Contacts, and other specs. Hmm, I wonder who supports these efforts? Google. These APIs allow people to plug and place and replace Google components with equivalents.

Google's GTalk is based on XMPP/Jabber (unlike everyone else who uses a non-open proprietary protocol). Google's Wave is based on XMPP/Jabber with an open federated protocol that anyone can implement, as well as giving the source away.

The Google's emerging paradigm, that Microsoft is also trying emulate, leaves individuals and small emerging players at a disadvantage because they cannot move to a different stage of usage without finding out that whatever countermeasures they employ will need to protect them from the front and rear.

(lots deleted)
Sorry to be blunt, but this just sounds like gibberish. First of all, most of these assertions are nonsense. Most of Google's other services and properties outside search and advertising have failed, that is, they are not #1 or #2 and in many ways, are niche areas and don't make any money, and are in danger of being shuttered, just like Yahoo's uber-portal which offered everything under the sun. Remember when Yahoo was dominant?

I don't know if you do much web development or are in the startup industry, but the fact of the matter is, Google's so-called "dominance" in all of these areas has not prevented a huge blossoming of companies offering similar or better services.

It's bog simple to avoid Google collecting anything about you. Don't sign in. Most Google services don't require login. There are so many alternatives to GMail it's not funny. Google Docs are inferior to Zoho Office and 280 North. YouTube, unless you watch porn, you don't need to login. I almost never bother.

And ironically, if you use Chrome, you can just launch an Incognito Window, and disable google cookies.

The kind of path-dependency you're trying to assert for Google does not exist in the way it does for an operating system vendor like Microsoft. The Web is far far more loosely coupled and much of it is built on open specifications and decentralized data exchange.

Big stuff with money and plenty of zeal should be eyed with suspicion. Every zealot thinks what they do isn't evil.

Sorry, you've yet to convince me that releasing open source based on open specifications is evil.

I use Chrome as my browser today. It doesn't force me to use any Google products. In fact, it doesn't even start up with Google as the homepage.

Contrast that with the experience of a new PC. Windows. Bundled MS Apps. Icons for trials or MS apps. IE as default browser. MSN as default home page. MS Passport integration. Vista DRM and Media Center up the wazoo tracking what you watch. Microsoft *DOES* have you by the balls. They've got you at home. They've got you at work. They got you on the phone and in game consoles. And they have you to some extent, online.

To even suggest that Google's position is anywhere near the omnipresence MS accomplishes is ludicrous, and Google is going about their services in a far more open way, engaging the small players, and letting everyone plug in their own replacements.

Chrome OS will be a frigging open source OS (Linux) + an Open Source browser, plus a windowing system written in Javascript. That's it. Any tie-ins will amount to pre-installed icons on the desktop. Whoop-de-do.

 

[3dilettante]

Umm, no. Facebook's "Facebook Connect" platform as well as it's "Beacon" system are sticking their tendrils into tens of thousands of websites. Facebook Connect is singlehandedly beating down the OpenID initiative to become the defacto "Single Sign On" API for the web. That means, potentially in the future, you won't be able to consume services on a major third party website without logging in through Facebook.

Beacon is Facebook's system to get personal data from third party sites funneled back to FB. Initially, it was opt-out, a ruckus ensued, and Facebook changed it to opt-in, but then an investigation turned up the fact that even if you opted-out, third parties would still forward your personal data to FB. For example, if you rented a movie on Netflix, this private information would be shared with Facebook.

Finally, Facebook is launching a new payment system designed to compete with PayPal, and it will work through the existing Facebook Connect system, so that third party sites will be encouraged to accept payment for goods and services through "Facebook Credits"

Now, do you really think Facebook is a siloed website that has no impact outside of its domain? They have a Firehose data feed from ~50 top level web properties into their Beacon system telling them everything you do, in real time. What movies you rent, what things you buy, what music you listen to.

I stand corrected, I now mistrust Facebook even more.

People don't turn on their computer and see Google. The majority of people turn on their computer and see Microsoft: IE as default browser, MS as default portal. Hell, Microsoft Passport was integrated at the OS level in Windows to provide login via MSN/Hotmail account.

Yeah, I'm not particularly in love with that either.
It is also not something I'd necessarily regulate against. I think legal statutes, if they are not to be oppressive, sometimes will have no choice but to let the market take it in the pants every once in a while.
Doesn't mean I would like it or that such things are any prettier if it were anyone other than MS.

And for 200 million people world wide, apparently, they turn on their computer and the first thing they type is either "Facebook.com", or they launch a Twitter client.

That's what market and mindshare will do for you.

I don't. I prefer open standards and let everyone implement all of them. I hate this viewpoint that you should prohibit integration because it makes usability AWFUL. Sign-on a great example.

I think separate players in each part of the process could interact through open standards, just that they usually won't.
I'm not against a moderate amount of branching out, but I do prefer that they not be dominant in multiple areas.

I want the security in knowing that someone attempting to make headway as a user or as a provider in one space: say applications, is not hamstrung by a competitor that can pull levers in the OS space, browser, or in the page-rank or advertising space.

I've also seen "integration" claims that silently nudge users or applications into a second point of lock-in more difficult to extricate themselves from.

Sorry to be blunt, but this just sounds like gibberish. First of all, most of these assertions are nonsense. Most of Google's other services and properties outside search and advertising have failed, that is, they are not #1 or #2 and in many ways, are niche areas and don't make any money, and are in danger of being shuttered, just like Yahoo's uber-portal which offered everything under the sun. Remember when Yahoo was dominant?

I'm not entirely sorry to see all of the above flounder.

I don't know if you do much web development or are in the startup industry, but the fact of the matter is, Google's so-called "dominance" in all of these areas has not prevented a huge blossoming of companies offering similar or better services.

I don't work in web development, rather EHR software. Perhaps that has colored my perception of the situation where large players claim to provide omnibus service packages.

Sorry, you've yet to convince me that releasing open source based on open specifications is evil.

The open-source part I didn't consider evil, just irrelevant to the path-presence portion of my argument.

I use Chrome as my browser today. It doesn't force me to use any Google products. In fact, it doesn't even start up with Google as the homepage.

Relative to the general populace that sticks with what came in the box and what downloaded itself from the default page, that might make you a power user.

I'll cede the argument to you, since you make a convincing argument that Google is not positioned to be as effective in its expansion as I had previously thought.

Contrast that with the experience of a new PC. Windows. Bundled MS Apps. Icons for trials or MS apps. IE as default browser. MSN as default home page. MS Passport integration. Vista DRM and Media Center up the wazoo tracking what you watch. Microsoft *DOES* have you by the balls. They've got you at home. They've got you at work. They got you on the phone and in game consoles. And they have you to some extent, online.

Sure, and I suspect that Google beating this back would turn into more of a replacement than demolition action. I'm not sure any other way is feasible.

Chrome OS will be a frigging open source OS (Linux) + an Open Source browser, plus a windowing system written in Javascript. That's it. Any tie-ins will amount to pre-installed icons on the desktop. Whoop-de-do.

Actually, that is something I would attribute some weight.
It's inevitable and on the face of it reasonable, but still influential.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Democoder, some of your points apply to MS software as well : don't use windows media player, delete the IE icon and you're done. MUCH simpler than anonymous/paranoia surfing, and notepad doesn't spy on me.

I can't see many people willing to deal with cookies. Most can't even change proxy settings on their own.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Here's room for thought.

Ma Bell was broken up in the past due to monopoly control of Telephone services and the flow of information. That control allowed them an advantage when branching out into other areas. One of which was the fledgling computer industry. Imagine the amount of information that could have been under the control of one company. Consider also a futher step in that chain would have been the future Internet and all the wealth of information that it now contains.

Google now has more control over the flow of information that Ma Bell ever did, and it is also seeking to branch out into other areas of technology. And whereas Ma Bell was limited to the US, Canada and Carribean regions, Google hhas global control of information.

Information = Power. It would be difficult to argue that any company in the world has as much power as Google does right now. Not only the power to know how, when, and what people are doing. But if it so chooses, it could easily shape the information that is released. Especially as they eventually control more and more of the information gathering, processing, and display pipeline.

That isn't to say that another company wouldn't be just as dangerous in the same situation. Yahoo, MS, IBM, Intel, whoever...

To give Google a free pass from observation and oversight is a bit naive. The potential they have to shape the world through the control of information is absolutely huge.

And while people complain about the government getting their fingers into people's personal information Google has access to all that and more. And is not publicly accountable in any form.

Yet despite this, people are still willing to sing their praises, and proclaim them the savior from all those other "evil" companies.

I find that disturbing to no end. Again, this doesn't mean I trust MS more, or Facebook more, or anyone else more. But neither does it mean I'm going to turn a blind eye on the possibilities inherent in ONE organization controlling this much information.

Microsoft, which is the popular "evil" company, of the day has far less access and control over information than does Google.

Companies are companies, at the end of the day, they will always do what want to do to maximize their profit.

Regards,
SB

 

[rpg.314]

Here's room for thought.

Google now has more control over the flow of information that Ma Bell ever did, and it is also seeking to branch out into other areas of technology. And whereas Ma Bell was limited to the US, Canada and Carribean regions, Google hhas global control of information.

Here we disagree. If I just search, google knows far less, and yes for many simple to find info, there are alternative searches that you can use to feed less info to Google. Facebook knows, far far more than google ever will. Your friends, your trips, your birthday, your relationship status, in near real time.

To my mind, FB>>Google>>MS wrt knowing about you. Thanks Democoder for your points. Now, I am wary of social networks even more.

Information = Power. It would be difficult to argue that any company in the world has as much power as Google does right now. Not only the power to know how, when, and what people are doing. But if it so chooses, it could easily shape the information that is released. Especially as they eventually control more and more of the information gathering, processing, and display pipeline.

I agree here. But here the fundamental difference between a search engine and a social network comes into play. There are no network effects in web search. Competition is far more intense, brutal and immediate in search. And thank god for MS's insane, we-need-to-have-a-finger-in-every-pie attitude. We do have a real competitor with more money and strong determination to compete and may be even win in this market. Where is the David for the FB-Goliath?

To give Google a free pass from observation and oversight is a bit naive. The potential they have to shape the world through the control of information is absolutely huge.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Period. This applies to every one save saints. And last time I checked, google, ms, fb, all were equally profit minded companies.

Yet despite this, people are still willing to sing their praises, and proclaim them the savior from all those other "evil" companies.

FB needs competition, I dunno if it has one. Google search needs competition, it has in the form of MS. Win needs competition, it doesn't have any.

And for this, I am encouraged to have competition for the OS market in form of google. We need a bunch of folks giving MS hard time in OS market just like it is having in browser market and google has in search market. As long as we have real competition, both/all parties will act to further consumer's interest.

I find that disturbing to no end. Again, this doesn't mean I trust MS more, or Facebook more, or anyone else more. But neither does it mean I'm going to turn a blind eye on the possibilities inherent in ONE organization controlling this much information.

Blindly, I trust *no* one.

 

[DemoCoder]

Ma Bell was broken up in the past due to monopoly control of Telephone services and the flow of information.

This is a very flawed analogy. There is a huge difference in setting up a utility and the barriers to entry and constraints imposed, and setting up web applications.

Utilities are based on rival goods. In order to set up a telephone network, you need to lease rights or easements to lay cable, put up towers, run telephone lines into buildings. The act of one company doing this conflicts with another. There is a limit to how many competing companies could run wires into your neighborhood. Even without regulatory hurdles, there is a well known "tragedy of the anti-commons" of securing rights of way with so many property owners, which is why the power of Emminent Domain exists.

Unlike Ma Bell, online properties are non-rivalrous as long as net neutrality holds. The fact that Google indexes your site does not preclude someone others, for the most part, nor does the fact that some people send packets to Google prevent you from sending packets to another company.

This is the whole basis of packet switching vs circuit switching (Ma Bell). In circuit switched networks, someone connecting from A to B consumes a fixed connection that cannot be used by anyone else.

There are so many other ways in which the information economy and information services cannot be compared to physical infrastructure utilities, that it just makes zero sense.

I'll give 3d one point: Once you start installing OSes on devices, you are at the point of rivalry, because unless you have some kind of magic "multi-OS" that can run two OSes side by side, the act of installing one OS on a machine in practice precludes the other (yeah yeah, there's VMs and multi-boot, but really, people tend to stick to one primary OS)

In this regard, MS is more like Ma Bell than Google, since they control the kernel and device layer of the entire information economy and that brings with it enormous power over players, like DELL, Intel, NVidia, AMD, etc.

In theory, competition would help stem this, being able to buy preconfigured machines with competing OSes: Apple/OSX, Linux machines, Chrome OS. In practice, MS's dominance is so omnipresent, so widespread on the desktop, that there is little to be done until interoperability can be achieved in ways that people can shed dependency on their app library.

And let's stop with the crap about information flow. Google doesn't control packet routing, they don't control publishing. The only thing they control is advertising dollars.

The baby-bells and cable companies to a large part, still control much of information flow on the internet. They see all the packets, and they can block them, report you to the RIAA/MPAA for piracy, and all manner of evils. ISPs routinely block Torrent ports, cap your downloads, and are seeking to meter your bandwidth and rape your pocket book while signing you to long term contracts. When the government asked Google to turn over records for warrantless terrorist snooping, Google refused. When the CIA/NSA/FBI asked the ISPs? They turned over the information, and gleefully installed Carnivore and Echelon.

Ma Bell is back, and it's not Google, it's AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. Compare those and their attempts to highway robbery metering to Japanese, who get 100MBps flat rate for $70/mo, no string attached.

That's why I'm sick of this silly Google criticism. Google is a new company, with less revenues, power, and lock in than very evil corporations that are fucking with you every day. You are blind to them, and focus only on Google because it is very visible.

If you think Google's search box limits how people see information, perhaps you've missed the whole social/microblog revolution that has swept new and old media. A large number of people now get their daily dose of exposure to information flow from Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, RSS readers, and old media coverage of them.

Google's really only useful if you know what you are looking for. It's when you don't know what you don't know that's really interesting, and Google doesn't solve this problem yet.

 

[Sxotty]

I don't know about most of what is going on here, but I will say I disagree with this

But that's the point. Apps and OSes have massively bloated over the last 20 years, but actual user functionality hasn't grown as much. You're not substantially more productive with MS Word in 2009 than you were in 1988. Stripping down a Linux distro to be lean-and-mean to run on low-end hardware is just what the doctor ordered.

Wow 1988? Heck the new office (08 or 07 or whatever it was where they introduced the ribbon onto PCs) was actually quite a marked improvement over office 2000/xp. And 1988? That was word perfect days, and things are vastly better in terms of productivity now.

I mistrust most large companies myself and that includes MS, Google, and yes Apple. I know people that work for google and I knew people that worked for MS and despite you assurances I certainly don't feel way better off with google than MS. I am glad that google is trying something in the OS space at the moment simply as variety is good, but I am not that excited either.

 

[karlotta]

go Google!, who needs "office" but drones in cubicles and the slaves they ensnare with there useless excl apps.... to read a database or spreadsheet, one shouldn't have to spend 350$ or more for sw... Google is my god, long live google!