Google and Microsoft: who is screwing who?

By Davey Winder
Wednesday, 15 July 2009 02:24

Strategy

So Google wants to be a player in the operating system market and Microsoft wants to be a search player? Meh.

Now that the dust is settling a little after the initial media feeding frenzy that followed the announcement by Google that it was entering the operating system business, I have been asking myself just how scared Microsoft really should be.

The answer I keep on arriving at is, contrary to what you might have read in hundreds of other blog postings and news reports, not very scared at all to be honest.

Look I know that Google thinks it has what it takes to be able to not only compete with Microsoft in the netbook business, but also give it a damn good kicking. But is that really the case? After all, well established Linux distros have not exactly destroyed the XP netbook stranglehold have they?

Google estimates that the Chrome OS will appear on a netbook sometime next year, giving Microsoft all the time in the world to sharpen up its own netbook oriented OS. And no, I don't mean XP but rather the netbook specific version of Windows 7 it has been working on for well over a year now.

Getting into a market early is not the be all and end all of the operating system business, otherwise every netbook would be Linux powered, end of story. However, when you are talking about a behemoth such as Microsoft getting in ahead of the competition brings with it a very handy dose of market advantage.

Not least in terms of hardware vendor support, that all important OEM equation. We all know that Microsoft has the mechanisms in place to ensure the best deals with the original equipment manufacturers, to get the pricing right.

Google does not have that track record, although its experience with Android in the mobile phone sector will no doubt prove valuable if not quite invaluable. The trouble is, by the time it does manage to get those OEM deals in place Microsoft and, perhaps, Apple will already be happily playing in the market.

At the end of the day is the Google Chrome OS really any different to any Linux distro? It is, after all, just an open source system with the Chrome web browser bolted on when it comes down to it.

To suggest that Google will screw Microsoft into the ground in a years time with the Chrome OS for netbooks is, frankly, like suggesting that Microsoft will do the same to Google with its Bing search engine.

I'm no Microsoft apologist believe me, but I suspect it will be smoking a cigarette and feeling satisfied on the search front long before Google has even managed to get to first base with Microsoft in terms of OS share.