Google's Schmidt initially opposed to Chrome, says Microsoft is welcome to port Internet Explorer on over
By Paul Miller 
posted Jul 10th 2009 9:48AM
posted Jul 10th 2009 9:48AM
Luckily, they also hinted at some native development possibility (hopefully) outside of the browser, stating that Microsoft is free to build a version of Internet Explorer for Chrome OS if they'd like, and that it's an open source project. According to Eric: "Even if we had an evil moment, we would be unsuccessful." He also mentioned there were plenty of "commonalities" between Chrome OS and Android, and that the two might grow even closer over time. Interesting. As for his role on Apple board, Eric will be working out with those folks as to when he needs to recuse himself from OS talk like he already does with iPhone talk. Most of the rest of the talk was spent making old person digs at Schmidt, Mr. BlackBerry himself.
Can Google do no evil? I hope not, as they have all our data...I do enjoy using Chrome alot though.
It's hard to tell Google's motives in this. I think in the long run what they're trying to do is push people away from computer run applications and towards Google's cloud services. In the end I think they're really just looking out for their own good. They already control much of how information on the internet is accessed and they want to start pushing further into providing and controlling the means by which people are productive on a computer, which is basically Microsoft's game.
In the 1980s Microsoft was to IBM what Google is to Microsoft now. Google may seem like they're being nice because they're using FOSS, but really it's never been Google's game to sell software--they sell services and advertising leveraged off their control of people's access to finding information. So Google will give away software if it pushes people into using their services instead of built-in applications.
So what!
Do you vehemently oppose commercial television? They collect information about you based on what you watch to provide income. Google uses information about what you browse to provide relevant advertisement to pay for their services.
I use Gmail and now Google voice (awesome btw) because they provide a great service that nobody else has touched. As a consumer, I'm provided better service and don't have to listen to disposable douche ads because my search history has no relevance to that particular product.
If you don't like that Google is doing or if they start using your data for "evil" purposes, you can always go to Yahoo, Microsoft or some other service to get your search/email/advertisement on. Google just does it better. They don't even sell what you (as a person, not an anonymous being) is doing.
PS. Every company is looking out for their own good. That's capitalism. When they start abusing their share of the market to lock others out.. then it gets bad. I don't see Google changing email protocols and other open standards to push their motives like a certain other company. To me, Google has done well at "doing no evil" so far.
I stopped watching TV thanks to commercial television, just saying.
Once again Andir makes a ridiculous post passing it off as fact.
I'd like to know how this works: "Do you vehemently oppose commercial television? They collect information about you based on what you watch to provide income. "
Just how do they do that, Andir? They monitor our brainwaves? Have listening devices in all our homes?
I'd love to see the tortured logic linking television ratings (which is a very small sampling of the entire audience) to all the information google is able to collect about their users.
Please don't invite internet explorer to the party. WTF?
and you call yourself OneLove... ha bob marley? :D
google is such a sweetie
Open party means open party. Can't stand at the door and just let the hot chicks in.
That's what Apple does.
That's actually the opposite of what apple does, you're just too drunk to notice. :P
I was wondering how google was going to differentiate Chrome OS from Android, good point Paul, should be interesting as thing matter develops.
Can't wait to see what happens when someone tries to plug in their ipod. Don't see Apple making a Linux iTunes anytime soon.
There is an equivalent more or less with Songbird on linux, that has iPOD support, only thing missing from it is the apple store. And I stress more or less, I realise it is not the same obviously
... which you can only blame Apple for... (re: iTunes Linux)
That does present an interesting situation...
Ubuntu + Chrome/Android runtime + iTunes
At that point AnyDVD would be the only thing keeping Windows in my house.
as this* matter develops...
I hope you were being sarcastic
If I was Microsoft, I would not even waste my time. Best case scenario, Chrome OS will have a 8-10% market share. Not worth the headaches of hiring a group of programmers to support it when your software already has a HUGE lead. This is one of the reasons a lot of game studios do not develop for Mac, not enough potential for a return. If they got up to 20% I would possibly consider it though.
I am an Apple Guy for the record, but I do not think Google has the ability to replace Microsoft. Most companies will stick with windows and IE regardless of what Google offers.
And because X360 games port directly to PC relatively seamlessly.
Also I do not see Google even getting its foot in the door. It will probably be severed off by a lot of the large computer manufactures. Look how long it took to get people to accept Linux distros. The only user base your going to see from this are from dual boots for a long time.
Yeah, but it's an open-source operating system. Google, being far more innovative than Microsoft, could have a good chance to take a large chunk out of the market share.
"Yeah, but it's an open-source operating system."
So?
Hate to break it to you, but there is no army of programmers that's going to work for free on the behalf of Google. Ubuntu, and the 10000 other Linux distros are open source, and where are they?
"Google, being far more innovative than Microsoft, could have a good chance to take a large chunk out of the market share."
That is just a mindless internet cliche. And a real stretch seeing that no one has even see a real screenshot of this thing yet.
I see this as having a shot assuming that the software and security is up to snuff. The good thing is that they aren't simply making another Linux distribution in the mould of Ubuntu and the like that has rather failed to penetrate the market. Rather, they are going to take the core Linux kernel and built an entirely new interface on top (no more X Windows, KDE or Gnome) which allows them to be different to Windows. Ultimately, Google has so far proven themselves pretty well so their products certainly stand a chance of being accepted by a mainstream audience.
Games aren't important so I don't see them being a factor in overall acceptance of the platform.
Time will tell but I certainly do not subscribe to the idea that Windows is the only platform we will use between now and Armageddon, although it clearly won't change overnight.
"Yeah, but it's an open-source operating system"
i hate having to quote the same thing as look around you but,
how long has unix/linux been around?
how long have they had the SAME MARKET SHARE?
it all comes down to who provides end-user technical support. How is google going to pay to have tech support for a "free" OS? They won't, just like Linux and Unix never have. Grandma and Grandpa don't want to goto tech support fourms when they have a problem, nor does a small bussiness. They want to call a help desk, and have their problem fixed NOW.
When you buy windows or OSX, or even a Solaris server, your not just buying the OS your buying the companies backing and support for it as well. When you have a problem, you call and they help you fix it (well they are supposed to). If you are a small company, you don't want to hire an IT if you don't have to. When you buy Windows Server 2008, you also buy years of "free" (well its included in the price of the software) tech support with it. There are more laymen computer users in the world then techies (while this blog might make you think otherwise) and people who don't know about computers want support for their software.
The market share of these open source OSes will never get above 2-5% for this reason alone. Unless google has some amazing tech support strategy up their sleeves (which based on the rest of the cloud apps right now, even though they are simple, the amount of support is not much).
"Apple is uncorruptible"
charging $15 for a update on iPod touches seems very evil to me.
I love the new Paul. Same stupidity, less talk and no extra bits wasted. :)
@AnnoyingPoster: +1000000
I dont quite understand how people are comparing Google to Microsoft.
Microsoft has software that has become the de-facto standard in many establishments, locking users into their practices wherever they happen to go.
Google technology is until recently been almost 100% web based where everyone has a lot more freedom and choice for which email/search/document system they want to use. People chose google because they give us what we want and their os's are just an extension of their web based services.
I love google and their openness, not trying to force their technology down your throat. I use google products because I WANT to, and I am fully aware of the alternatives available.
Google and openess in the same sentense? Really?
Yes. Can provide evidence to the contrary?
I said openness not open source
Google will most likely make a great OS but it doesn't really matter until it gets adopted by major manufactures because most people and by most I mean the general consumer(same people who think mp3 player is different to iPod?) wouldn't bother uninstalling there current OS.
But then again it could surge through on Netbooks?
That guy should just step down from the Apple board. Seriously. He can't talk about iPhone, he shouldn't be able to talk about Mobile Me and other web services, and now he won't be able to talk about the god damn operating system itself. Just step down already. You guys compete a lot these days!
Well, you could be called a bit of a dick as well.
None are more or less evil, they are all going to make money in any way they can. Apple is certainly no better than either of them.
they stopped making the Mac version of IE ages ago, what makes you think they are going to port it to Linux?
more importantly would anyone actually use it?
I don't mind IE8 the Win7 version. I like when you highlight stuff a little icon pops up to do quick searchs. But I guess everyone uses there own I actually use chrome but I jump to IE once in a while.Not a fan of FF as I don't need those plugins but I know ALOT of people use them so more power to you.
They wouldn't make a version of IE for Chrome unless Microsoft effectively changed its business model to web applications rather than the usual cash cows of Windows and Office. With IE only available for Windows it effectively provides a barrier to change from Windows to another platform if the web sites/applications you use only work for IE. Making IE for Chrome would mean that you no longer needed Windows itself and therefore Microsoft wouldn't receive your license fee.
Still, things can change and I've seen the occasional flying pig over the years.
Chrome OS is such a confusing name. Is it an OS with the Chrome browser as it shell, or something completely unrelated to the Chrome browser? Calling it Google OS would probably limit its openness. I bet they wished they had taken WebOS before Palm did.
They should just have the OS be Android and create a Webkit-based shell for it, similar to Palm's WebOS. This way, some of that Chrome OS goodness can leak down to the android crowd.
Hey, at least we didn't have to pay $15 for Paul 2.0.
@greg
Hahaha he's only worth about $2.0 kronor.
If Microsoft were interested in porting IE do Linux, they would have already done it. Porting it to Chrome OS would strengthen Google's position, if anything. I very much doubt they will ever do that - but with Ballmer as head of MS, you never know.
I think it was stated as more of a "calling out" than anything else. They know MS won't do it, but if they call them out on it they can show how they are more willing to accept MS than MS is willing to accept of them.
But, why the b. ? Has Paul a. Chapel changed his name?
This will get the feds to start the anti-trust case... Own the internet and try for the desktop... Isn't this the same, but in reverse complaint about Microsoft? And thinking a company that is trying to maximize profits as "not evil" is stupid. All companies have a tendency to do what is in their interest.
I am a capitalist and I am not stupid enough to think any company has anything but their own interests at heart.
Anti-trust isn't about owning a certain share of the market. It's about the acts you do when you get there.
As long as Google continues using open standards and allows competition, they are free and clear. Microsoft was doing everything in it's power to prevent competition.
never gonna happen. microsoft has made themselves synonomous with "PC" and 90% of the consumers are going to view a netbook running chrome os as an entirely different piece of technology than one running windows 7. chrome os has to take on a lot more than just the windows os.
look at apple; take off the pretty cover and it's practically identical to any dell, lenovo, sony, ..., but somehow microsoft has kept us from calling it a PC and people run away in fear.
Apple is the one who act like it's a completely different piece of technology. Not Microsoft.
Well, to be fair... Microsoft HAS adopted PC. It doesn't matter who started it.
Isn't making the browser indistinguishable from the OS what Microsoft got sued for and essentially forced to remove from Windows? Why is nobody talking about this statement from Google?
No, Microsoft was sued for disallowing competitors to replace the browser. MS tried to claim it was an integral part of the OS until someone came along and proved them wrong by removing it.
And part and parcel to the whole suit was Microsoft's claim that the reason/need for IE was its move to integrating it into the OS:
"Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free. Those who opposed Microsoft's position countered that the browser was still a distinct and separate product which did not need to be tied to the operating system, since a separate version of Internet Explorer was available for Mac OS."
So Microsoft got sued and lost because they included their own browser in their OS. The reasoning behind that lawsuit was that Microsoft had reached it's browser dominance unfairly and so throughly simply because their own browser was included in their OS.
Somehow I don't think anyone is going to do this to Google when Chrome OS is released with Chrome Browser included. And don't give me that "But IE's marketshare is huge, Chrome's is going to be so small" crap! Even IE started off with a small market share. It's the fact that the browser was included in a sucessful OS that gave IE the huge marketshare.
Now keep in mind you can't have things both ways. What happens 10 years from now if Chrome OS is dominant over Windows? Are you going to support Microsoft if they want to sue Google the way Microsoft was sued over IE?
Why is it that anyone (or company) who succeeds beyond others gets sued for doing so? I already know the answer. It's because people think they have the right to the "spoils of war" without having to fight for it.
BS. Microsoft wasn't sued for including the browser. It was sued because of what it did with that browser. Not maintaining it to standards, integrating their proprietary tech into it and locking competition out through OEM deals that disallowed OEMs from installing non-Microsoft software even if the customer asked for it.
The EU suit was underwritten by google (late in the game), so this is tongue-in-cheek sarcasm of google I would think.
Quote by Paul b. Chapel: "AnnoyingPoster,
you are a dumbass. possibly more so than me, and that is quite hard to do."
I lol'ed. He seems to be admitting he is a troll. And I agree with him on this one. AnoyingPoster's comment WAS stupid.
Has Google ever written a major program in anything other than java? A java based OS might work on the mobile platform... it's not going to work on the desktop.
Yes. Python. I read a while back that they do a large amount of stuff with Python.
is this a troll? google uses C, C++, linux scripting, they hired python's inventor to continue developing python and android is written in C... + they have lots of knowledge in multi processing, computer clusters, databases, javascript, browser compatibility and more and more.. where did you come from ??
Why wouldn't a Java-based OS work on the desktop? (Or to be more accurate - it would work fine, why do you think it wouldn't?)
Sure, somebody could make a crap Java-based OS - er, if I remember rightly, Sun actually tried their hand at this - but there is nothing to stop anyone making a good one.
In recent years, thanks to aggressively optimising runtimes, Java performance on Intel is hardly slower than native C code. There's nothing whatever wrong with the language underpinnings (there are things that could be better, but certainly nothing anywhere near as 'wrong' as C++, which is still widely used) and some of the security features are useful for maintaining 'sandbox' security. If you want a 'managed' language, then Java is the best one to choose - there's no need to reinvent the wheel when this particular wheel already has four million developers on board.
Most of the limitations in Java on the desktop are to do with the windowing/UI systems (which Google replaced in Android) and with its cross-platform nature causing a lack of certain platform-dependent features (ditto re Android).
So, a Java-based operating system (probably not 'pure Java') would work fine on desktop. But then, traditional C-based operating systems also work fine on desktop...
Is there any actual evidence that Chrome OS will be Java-based? (By which I mean, a Linux kernel but with a mutated version of Java on top running applications, like Android.)
I don't see any particular reason to assume it wouldn't be just another Linux distribution with a new UI etc. Certainly if it can run standard Linux apps that would be a big plus for it. Forget Internet Explorer, can it run Firefox? :)
The whole Chrome OS name sounds just so awkward. I guess fans of Google that like using its various apps may be interested, but I don't see making a big dent in Windows or OS X marketshare.
Of course, we all know that Chrome OS is not just an open source OS with some more Google ties, but it's also a way for Google to pump more people to use it's services and web apps, meaning more moolah. It's not just out of the goodness of Google's heart. It'll be interesting to see how far it goes. I on the other hand, don't really intend on using this. I only use Google for some web searches, and sometimes I'll go on YouTube (though I think it's still crappy compared to others video sharing sites), but that's all I want to bother going to Google with. I just don't like the idea of Google sharing my info. to advertisers, and Google OS doesn't make me feel any more confident about letting Google tap into my life.
Anyway, competition is good, and I can't wait to see how this might affect Microsoft's and Apple's decisions.
As far as the whole "support" question goes, it doesn't really matter which OS "grandma" is using.
It doesn't matter if it's Windows, MacOS, Linux or Chrome. She's coming to the local Linux guru to get her problems worked out.
The utter lack of understanding (or interest in understanding) even the UI of any OS pretty much undercuts the
usefulness of all of them. This "cult of stupidity" causes "support issues" in Windows even when it really shouldn't
be the case for the simple reason that people aren't expected (hell, actually actively discouraged) to THINK about
what they are doing.
Old school Mac user culture was much better about this sort of thing but even now it's degraded into
the same nonsense.
This is how a thoughtful 85 year old can run circles around a mindless 60 year old.
Great browser
you use
that randomly does
next lines.
When
writing comments.
Glad you are a
computer expert that is
in a
position to be critical.
sadly, google's definition of open source , as seen from their other OS, android, is not the general notion of open source. first they will build the thing without showing it to anyone, then they will release partial sdk and partial source code and eventually it will turn out that this whole thing is built for people who want/will *only* use the interfaces that google will supply "for the benefit of multi platform-ness".
In short, this is going to suck. the only good thing that may come out of it is more linux drivers and chrome for linux...
If google wants to succeed in this thing they need to:
1. put all of the source code, designs, etc. etc. on the net today. maybe on source forge or some other non-google repository.
2. build a community around it: people have different interests, some will want to do sound, some will want to do net, others UI, etc. etc.
3. engage the community on an *on going bases*, never looking back or trying to gain control
4. enable and encourage forks and merges, moblin is open? can we port anything from there?
5. make sure that current netbooks etc. can work with chrome OS, nothing better than having a real world platform to test on
6. lower the barrier for entry. With android the first 1.5 years (so far) are a mess, we don't have good enough coding support, we were (until very recently) confined to a VM which was not polished enough, the documentation was horrible
7. do not offer prizes, do not play games, stop with the uber geekiness. You already got all the uber geeks, we just don't get it.
and I can say much more but basically its just: make it simple, accessible and straight forward. and don't let us wait for it.
Hey, I have cut, copy & paste!
"Larry describes Chrome OS as the "anti-operating system" and indistinguishable from a browser"
And that's a good thing?
If all you ever do it read email and browse the web.. why do you even need an OS but to feed the web?
My personal thought is that I would not trust a google OS. They are in the business of tracking people and selling advertising. Right now, I block all google cookies and google advertising. I obviously couldn't do that If I were using their software.
Once any company gets huge people will start to call it evil, which is ridiculous. But i see Google being considered an evil soon. Thats just how it is...sad...
Chrome OS and Android might grow even closer over time?
I think this is where it clicks into place. Apple has shown people are happy to buy all sorts software on the iPhone and owns the shop that takes the micropayments. That is difficult on a desktop system.
If Google manages to create a similar marketplace on the basis of Android they will have springboard for selling application to the desktop. All the have to do is give Chrome OS a similar protection for paid apps as Android has.
I think PbC is just taking the mickey out of our good friend PaC. I don't think it actually is the original Paul
lol what a dumb fanboyish comment. Take a bite out of that Apple and hope ya choke on it.
Google is out of their mind and just going to waste tons of shareholder money. Who is going to want a web browser based OS with maybe a small file organizer for a netbook. I bet netbooks that carry this will be the cheapest of the bunch even cheaper than other Linux disteros because it's going to lack many features that people need or want. Google will have to learn being mad at Ballmer and trying to beat Microsoft at its own game is not going to get you anywhere, in fact Microsoft must be doing something right by luring competitors like Google into unknown waters. I hope Microsoft will make Google eat dirt because I'm tired of being asked to download their toolbar and seeing so many unrelated ads when I go to my favorite websites. Hey Google you should Bing dead companies that Microsoft ran to the ground, you're not going to be next but there is always a possibility rofl.
Sorry I trolled that up! I can't help it guys I have Microsoft in my blood.
:)