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GOOGLE CHROME VS WINDOWS: OR WHY MICROSOFT SHOULD BE QUAKING

Google vs. Microsoft doesn’t make sense on one level. One makes operating systems for PCs, the other is basically a search engine. Sure, the two compete to hire the brightest young software developers but there isn’t an obvious overlap between what the two companies actually do. Despite this, they’ve been busily moving into each other’s sphere for years. Microsoft has launched (and relaunched, and re-relaunched) it’s own search engine. Google has responded by quietly launching a variety of online applications that mimic Microsoft’s Office suite.

But now Google is making the boldest step yet – and, if it comes off, one that could spell disaster for Microsoft. And a whole heap of traditional software development companies, come to think of it.

Google’s ‘Chrome’ project is their first attempt to build a browser. That’s the bit of software you’re using to read this page in case you didn’t know. Microsoft have their own browser – Internet Explorer (hint: there’s an 80% chance you’re using it to read this page). They give it away free anyway, so Google aren’t chopping off a revenue stream. But they are edging us closer to a world in which the common-or-garden PC looks dangerously close to extinction. And Microsoft, who earn the vast bulk of their money through people buying PCs with their operating system installed, are looking down the barrel of a gun.

Over the years, the things that websites can do has been inching closer and closer to what normal programmes that run on your PC can do. Those are things like your spreadsheets, presentations, image editing, email and calendar programs like Outlook and so on. Oh – and any games you like to play.
 

an update to web-based software can happen without you even noticing it.

For all these programs to run on a normal PC, you need an operating system. That’s what Windows is – a system on which software programs can run. Operating systems are huge, unwieldy and complicated things to build which is why these days the only real players left in the market are Microsoft and Apple and if someone comes to you asking for help in building an operating system your best bet is to kick them straight back out of the door.

But all that fancy dragging and dropping, cutting and pasting and (let’s be realistic) messing around with spreadsheets you do on a day to day basis can now be emulated without the need to bother buying and downloading software in many cases. You might use Outlook for your email, but you’re just as likely to use Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. Probably 90% of you use Excel for that all-important number crunching, but Google Spreadsheets does exactly the same job. Google Earth might be the World’s most brilliant way to waste a dinner time, but it’s all available online.

There are also problems with traditional software. You have to constantly upgrade it every time new features become available, which means boringly watching it download for 30 hours and sitting through a series of “WARNING: are you sure you want to de-install patch 34? This may affect your hairline” messages in a state of increasing exasperation. By contrast, an update to web-based software can happen without you even noticing it. In effect, there’s only one version of the software – the version you get when you go to the website.

This suddenly begs the question: why do you need an operating system at all?

Google’s answer to that is only distantly hinted at in their promotional comic book about their browser: you don’t. Or at least you won’t if it all goes to plan.

Their browser is intended to go far beyond what traditional browsers did – which was ‘show web pages’. It uses a host of technologies to bring it far closer to performing the kind of tasks that were traditionally handled by the operating system (memory allocation, pointers and a great big steaming heap of technical jargon that neither you or I are in a position to understand). By revisiting so fundamentally what the browser actually is, they are effectively saying to the world’s software developers: “build your software online and we can help you deliver it effectively”.

Of course, the trouble faced by Google is the same trouble faced by lots of people who’ve tried to get people to use a new browser. Which is that most people don’t even know what ‘a browser’ is. My dad separates his world into units as basic as “my computer” and “the internet” and he’s way closer to the average than clever people like you or I. Where Google differ from people like Opera and Mozilla who’ve inched down this road before is that everyone is already using Google every single day.

A single well designed message on Google’s homepage is going to reach a huge slice of PC users within a week.
For now, the project is only just off the ground. Google have never worked in this space before and getting it right will be long, arduous and expensive. But if Google is short of anything, it isn’t money, talent or time. Meanwhile Microsoft – who have never managed to get a firm foothold in cyber space – seem to have very few options open to them to challenge Google on their home turf.

Of course they too have plenty of spondoolies and lashings of brainpower to draw on and as many challengers in the past have found to their cost, no-one should challenge Microsoft lightly.

Today’s Moral?

Pull up a pew and watch the drama unfold. It’s cheaper than buying in a Ricky Hatton fight on pay-per-view and the only winner in the end will be us, the users. Make sure you get in plenty of popcorn though – this will run for years. When the two giants have slugged it out either search as we know it or Windows itself will be as much a part of history as the Atari or the fax machine.

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