Take his Fake Steve piece on the Microsoft-Yahoo merger: http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/02/ballmer-im-completely-... which I felt was the most succinct and insightful piece on the subject from any journalist.
My bet is that Chrome OS will have similar impact to the Chrome browser - encourage everyone to step up their game, but not dominate the market. Google has a lot of money and a lot of bright people, and it acts just like a bright person with little financial concerns: It toys with a lot of ideas, many of them brilliant, but rarely bothers to execute them fully. An OS takes years of frustrating, boring work to mature, I doubt Google has the focus for that.
"But what, exactly, is the big vision here? I guess they'll talk about how phase one was the PC revolution and now we're entering phase two which is Internet computing and the cloud and they'll say that by joining together they'll become this giant powerful megacloud provider and the battle for utility computing is going to be all about scale."
Years ago Steve Jobs presented the digital-hub strategy for the Mac. He talked about the internet being the second phase of the PC and the digital-hub the third phase. So the above cited paragraph is mockery of the finest order. The better pieces of Fake-Steve are full of this stuff.
Why should we doubt their ability to stick with a Linux Windowing and Usability project? This 'Google is unfocused. Google doesn't follow through. Google leaves projects to rot' meme is particularly annoying, because there is so little evidence that it happens to anything on a significant scale.
Several of their large acquisitions have appeared to be neglected, but each and every time that I can recall, it's been a seeming public neglect followed by the introduction of the 2.0 successor.
Case in point: if you think their social networking acquisitions are being left to rot, vs their energy being focused on new services that integrate with WAVE, I've got a bridge to sell you.
As for their social networking acquisitions vs WAVE, I'm completely ignorant on both (and expect to remain so, along with most of humanity).
But my main point isn't Google, but FSJ's tech coverage. Between Techcrunch & co hysteria and The Register's empty cynicism, I think FSJ's piece remains the best analysis of the Chrome OS announcement yet.
Google Video and Notebook are good examples of projects that seem to linger and rot, but are in fact just having their energy devoted to their successors. Google Video development is being channeled into Youtube updates and Notebook into WAVE-based document creation.
And the only reason I didn't respond to your comment about FSJ's analysis is I agree with you 100% on that. Lyons' is without a doubt the most insightful and interesting commentary thus far.
I just think the 'Google is unfocused/fickle/etc' meme needs to be approached critically and put out to pasture if it's found wanting. (which i believe it is)
Fire and Motion.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html
The only way this makes sense is if they are trying to keep Microsoft distracted and too busy defending their core market to attack Google. If this forces MSFT to further lower their asking price for Windows 7 on low end devices, it is probably a success for Google.
The danger is if they take it too seriously. They do not want to get in a serious competition with MSFT for OS market share. But if this is costing them relatively little in engineering costs and executive focus, it's probably a good idea.
Fake Steve makes this same point: "Nah, the only point in Google giving away a free browser and OS is somehow to fuck up Microsoft."