"With the software, Google is mounting a blunt challenge to the dominance of Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs about 95 percent of PCs. Google promises that its Chrome operating system, which will be available on computers in the second half of next year, will put an emphasis on speed, simplicity and security.
Google faces enormous hurdles. Computing giants like I.B.M. and Sun Microsystems have spent years trying to dethrone Microsoft, with little to show for it.
But if it gains traction, Google’s plan could undermine not only Windows but also Microsoft’s other multibillion-dollar franchise, Office. Google is trying to put the Web browser at the center of people’s digital lives, relegating complicated operating systems like Windows to a secondary role."more from the same article...
"“We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the Web in a few seconds,” Sundar Pichai, a vice president for product management, and Linus Upson, an engineering director, said in a blog post announcing the project late Tuesday. “We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better.”
The plan is part of Google’s bet that a huge shift in computing is under way. In Google’s view, Web connections will become so fast and browsers so powerful that most of the programs that currently run on PCs will be replaced by online applications. That would eliminate the need to install, upgrade and back up software. ""Rather than buying bulky desktop computers, consumers have been turning recently toward small, low-cost laptops known as netbooks, which serve as little more than gateways to the Web. Google says its operating system will be initially aimed at netbooks, which are generally not powerful enough to handle the latest version of Windows.
Google’s fundamental business model, too, may play to its advantage. The company says it believes that making Chrome free to PC makers will be worthwhile because more people will spend more time online, using Google’s search service and its other Web-based applications like Google Docs, a Web rival to Microsoft Office. That will help Google make more money from advertising, which accounts for nearly all of its $22 billion in annual revenue.
That approach essentially reverses some of the dynamics used by Microsoft to crush Netscape. At the time, Netscape charged $50 for its Web browser, and Microsoft undermined its leadership by making its own browser, Internet Explorer, free. Now it is Microsoft that faces free rivals to both Windows and Office, its two biggest cash cows.
Under its model, Google could even afford to pay computer makers to install its software on their machines, essentially subsidizing their cost.
“If hardware is free and software is free, the only way you make money is off of services, and that is Google,” said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation."Read the complete NY Times article here
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