Google’s chrome os is an interesting development, both logical and interesting from a historical perspective. It is logical — the world is rapidly moving into a web based cloud space. Other than big companies with the resources to run large environments of their own, for individuals and small organizations, it’s just so easy and logical to put everything out there on the web. Gmail+Google Apps + facebook+twitter, etc. , and you’ve got most people’s computing needs met. In that sense removing the proprietary operating system with a special purpose, open source OS is very logical in terms of simplifying computers and reducing cost and security risks. Everything becomes more convenient. I applaud this. It’s all very simple and elegant.
It does however have a recent technological precendent. Back in the nineties, Microsoft started to dominate all categories of software, and the easiest and most elegant software solution was to run a 100% microsoft stack. MS Office 95+ NT4 + IE3 + VS4 + MS Back Office 2, why it was a great thing! Yet somewhere around there two things happened. MS somehow turned the corner from giving piles of useful functionality to providing steaming piles of functionality – it became all too much, the descent into vista had started, too much stuff, too complicated, too expensive, too heavy, never quite working right, and way too expensive. And at the same time the internet came and permanently destabilized their world.
There’s a lesson for Google here. Today google is ubiquitous, indispensable, and generally benign. We love using their stuff, it’s great, we trust it, the world is good. But once they own the entire stack, the world will somehow become darker. Can we always trust them? Will they become vulnerable to governments ? Will they slow down and become too wrapped up in their own thinking to notice what the customers are up to ? Will there be some new technical innovation to trip them up, one better captured by newer or nimbler competitors ? Surely, because creative destruction is the way of nature. We went to Yosemite the other day and saw the new forest growing amid the skeletons of the old forrest, the cycle of fire and rebirth, it applies us to our constructions too.
Interesting post Tom, I agree with your nature analogy and I’m questioning Google’s move here. It seems like Android is also poised to be somewhat of an operating system and I feel that there’s some overlap there. It seems like once you control “everything” it’s hard to keep track of it all and have a working vision. Apple does it well but that’s because of their dictator-like leader, I don’t think Google has one of those…