Why Google is making an operating system
maximise.dk
maximise.dk
1) Chrome's market share is minute
2) Google makes over 95% of their money on advertising
I'm not entirely certain how much thought went into this article, but I'm certain that the Google OS hype machine has gone into overdrive as I'm seeing too many articles like this that make absolutely no sense.
Well, that's kind of the point I was trying to make - Google make their money on advertising and webapps, not on browsers. It doesn't matter for their bottomline which browser people use. All that matters to them is that people use google's products, and the fewer roadblocks there are the more money google makes.
Chrome doesn't need to have more than a minute marketshare to drive the competition to make better browsers and more internet capable OS'es, which will ultimately be good for Google. For Google it's not about marketshare in the OS or browser business, it's about driving innovation so that users will move on to the web.
To evolve the browser into something that is closer to the server would eliminate the roadblock of which you speak. I don't think you need to create an OS to do that. IE has a decided advantage for Microsoft as it comes pre-installed and is prominently showcased within the OS itself. The fact that you have to download and then install either Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Opera presents a roadblock for users. Switching operating systems is an even bigger roadblock.
Google could work with Dell or something to do this, and Google could even promise to stand behind Dell if Microsoft tries to retaliate in a way that almost nobody else (like RedHat) could.
(Also note that with yet another six months or a year of hardware development, the specs on these netbooks are going to be pretty good. These netbooks also won't be subject to the Microsoft XP "sell it with only 1GB" issue, or anything other netbook-hobbling plans Microsoft might concoct.)
The end business goal may be to just get Google to create a better linux option, a -marketable- linux option, so those same vendors can haggle with microsoft for better volume licensing on Windows 7 netbook, including lifting those absurd hardware restrictions.
And I guess it wouldn't hurt to have plan B ready, because users aren't going to tolerate Windows performance on netbooks for long.
Keep in mind, their core business is advertising and as mixmax has pointed out, they want to lower the barrier to access this advertising. Trying to convince users to switch operating systems seems to me a rather convoluted path to achieving this objective.
All I meant to say is that I'm sure this will be concretely available for purchase in stores and not merely some abstract new Linux distro. Nobody will have to "install" it. (It may not even be possible to install it.)
In business strategy there's a concept called complementary products. A complementary product is one that is one that makes your product more valuable the cheaper it is. Cars and gasoline is an example of this. Servers and software is another. The cheaper gasoline is, the more valuable a car is. The good strategy is to commoditize your complements, thus driving down price. This will put more value into your product. For instance, if you run Google you make software. Your interest is to comoditize servers, thus driving the price down. This makes your business more valuable because your complement has been commoditized. Indeed, this is exactly what Google is doing when they use standard boxes in large arrays instead of buying Sun servers.
My argument in the blogpost is similar. If Google can remove as many obstacles as possible, and commoditize their complementary products they will win. This is exactly what they are doing with this move. They are forcing their competitors into making a product that will make Google money. Google doesn't care (financially at least) about browsers and operating systems. They make their money on online apps and marketing. Their strategy is to make it as easy as possible to get online and use their services. The argument is underpinned by the fact that both are open sourced. They won't make Google any money directly, but they'll help tremendously in commoditizing OS'es and browsers.
Joel Spolsky has a post about omplementary products that explains the concept much better than I can ever hope to do: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html
But the theoretical strategy that you state (the commoditization of the operating system) seems a bit "round about" for Google. In other words, I think it would be better for Google to really make their web browser into a new kind of web browser instead of creating an entirely new kind of operating system. Better yet, a web browser that enhances an existing operating system might be a better way to commoditize the OS.
It is possible that they have figured out a killer app for their new OS, but I suppose that's fuel for a separate discussion.
If Google made an enhanced webbrowser they still wouldn't have a clear line of sight from their apps to the customer: There would still be a middleman that could get in the way.
If you had RTFA before your first comment, you would not have gotten sidelined.
The author (mixmax) of TFA graciously conceded in his reply that his "Google won the browser wars" was probably not the best choice of words, but the context made it immediately clear to me what he meant by that choice of words.
Any big company will eventually "turn to the dark side", not because they want to but because that seems to be the dynamic of large corporations. After all they only have to answer to shareholders, and shareholders demand profits no matter what the cost.
Google has done a good job of resisting this with their Don't be evil motto and trying to retain control of the boardroom. But I fear that it's an oncoming tide that not even Larry and Sergey can stem.