I was a bit surprised with Google announced they were going to be creating a lightweight Chrome OS for use in netbooks. But is it “doomed”? This article at Slate says “yes,” and I’m inclined to agree, mostly for this reason, as the author writes:
Sometimes there’s a logic to this. It made sense for Google to create its own mobile phone OS, for instance, because there were few great operating systems that would deliver the Web to phones—and Google’s future depends on the Internet being available everywhere, all the time. Thus you can think of Google’s investment in Android as a kind of loss leader—it gives away the OS for free in the hope that billions of people around the world will one day use Android-like phones to click on ads at the gym.
But the Chrome project is unencumbered by any such rationale. If 20 percent of the world’s computer users switched from Windows to Chrome, would that help Google’s bottom line? Sure, all those people would now be using Gmail and Google Docs—but they could have been doing that in Windows, too! An MBA might describe the Chrome OS as a wasteful customer acquisition expense; Google would be wiser to use all the cash that it’s pouring into developing the new program for advertising instead. But a gangster would call this move what it really is: The point of Chrome OS—the only point of Chrome OS—is to screw with Microsoft.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t welcome a slick, lightweight non-geek friendly OS for netbooks (where Windows doesn’t usually make sense), but I too had a difficult time figuring out where Google was coming from on this one.
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