Silicon Valley watchers like to view the competition between Google and Microsoft through the prism of all-out war. And the search giant’s announcement that it is developing a free operating system, dubbed Google Chrome OS, certainly seems to fit the metaphor: an invasion onto Microsoft’s home turf, the bedrock of the $200 billion company, just as Microsoft’s new search offering, Bing, has finally chipped away at Google’s lead. (NEWSWEEK is a content partner of Microsoft’s MSNBC and MSN.)
“Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome,” read one headline at TechCrunch. The Seattle Post-Intelligencercalled the operating system “a new cannon to shoot over Microsoft’s bow.” And pretty much everyone else described the news as a bombshell, an assault, or a bid for supreme hegemony.
Perhaps. But those hoping for immediate fireworks may be disappointed. The Chrome OS is still a long way off—it won’t be released until the second half of 2010, an unusually long lead time for Google, which likes to make services available as soon as they are announced. The OS will initially be used to power netbooks (small and cheap devices used mainly for Web browsing), whose sales have been growing substantially, but still represent just a sliver of the overall PC market. And the Chrome browser itself has struggled to catch on with consumers, eking out a roughly 2 percent market share eight months after its release, a fourth-place showing.
“Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome,” read one headline at TechCrunch. The Seattle Post-Intelligencercalled the operating system “a new cannon to shoot over Microsoft’s bow.” And pretty much everyone else described the news as a bombshell, an assault, or a bid for supreme hegemony.
Perhaps. But those hoping for immediate fireworks may be disappointed. The Chrome OS is still a long way off—it won’t be released until the second half of 2010, an unusually long lead time for Google, which likes to make services available as soon as they are announced. The OS will initially be used to power netbooks (small and cheap devices used mainly for Web browsing), whose sales have been growing substantially, but still represent just a sliver of the overall PC market. And the Chrome browser itself has struggled to catch on with consumers, eking out a roughly 2 percent market share eight months after its release, a fourth-place showing.
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