Microsoft is in danger of seeing its products become less of a benchmark to aim for - more like a mile market to pass.
Microsoft did an impressive job of seizing Unix market share from Novell file servers and Unix servers & desktops in the 1990's.
They had a few strategies:
1. Offer cheap file serving without user limits
in desktop OS to get rid of Novell which had
high price tag and user limits.
2. Price significantly lower than Unix systems.
3. Hang a "legacy" label on Unix systems.
4. Push Office applications as reason to get OS.
This is one take on the Windows vs. ChromeOS rivalry: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135288/Google_s_Chrome_OS_poses_long_term_threat_to_Microsoft
I agree that the battle is hypothetical now.
However, having watched a number of technology niche takeovers, I noticed something. The challenging products that are game changers usually overtake an overconfident incumbent by offering blatant advantages such as these:
* price
* maintenance/operation costs (TCO)
* graphics quality & system performance
* expandability
* ease of use and user empowerment
Linux and perhaps ChromeOS blow away Windows on the first 2 points
Graphics quality & performance will depend on the systems Google management selects/allows to run ChromeOS on. At a whim, almost - they could make it very high performance. Of course, apps and/or utilities have to take advantage of it to get it used but they might already have started the process of fostering those.
Expandability of a ChromeOS cloud client computer is going to offer virtual resources so local ones will be less important. It is conceivable that a Mac or Linux/Windows PC with a scanner in your home or office could be configured as a resource providing a scanner service - accessed via a URL or a web service API via negotiation with the cloud or tunneling through it
Nothing revolutionary there and it keeps the ChromeOS cloud client simple, flexible, and cheap. At the same time it allows the user to capitalize on their existing OS. Security is the tricky thing. Jini finally created a decent scheme for that for Java applications but it took time. UPnP has been been problematic and it let cybercrooks take over systems. Google has advantage of being able to look at past things that worked and failed and avoid going down wrong paths.
Empowerment for office app suite users already exists. Google has their web based word processor, spreadsheet, etc. Running on Linux lets them harness Open Office if they wish, as well, though they might not want it running inside ChromeOS for security & archicture reasons. Does not matter
Virtualization can be seamlessly integrated onto a desktop allowing apps running under two OS to coexist, even to the point where their windows overlapp each other.
Ease of use is largely a degree of how smooth Google does the GUI design. HCI is far ahead of were it was a couple decades ago, yielding a lot of sound principles, software mechanisms, and hardware devices. Microsoft, by no means, has ever had a corner on the market of ease of use.
Malware has really messed up ease of use for users. It is not really safe to use a Windows system carelessly, and caring to keep a Windows system safe takes a lot of work. Individual users who relied completely on iT department to protect them have lost a personal fortune after being blamed for the actions of malware. Take the man who worked for Massachusetts, for example, as well as school teachers in the US & UK. Their use of the computer for business, ultimately, was not easy on them.
Simply using the computer to do online banking has proven incredibly costly for some companies and churches this year. They lost tens to hundreds of thousand of dollars. Their OS got compromised and malware embezzled a fortune.
Surprisingly, increasing security does not seem to be a game changer. At least in the past it has not.
Multics, one of the earliest and most secure multi-user, interactive operating systems was very powerful, customizable, and safe. We still use rings & privilege security model it had over 3 decades ago today.
Unix was created by some Multics team members who wanted an OS that could populate more computers and felt the security was in the way of that, which it was.
Multics only ran on one company's CPU, required its own special hardware for security, ultimately only sold something like 50 systems, cost millions of dollars, and was not a great profit-maker. Unix ran on general purpose, much lower cost minicomputers of the day.
After its creation, Unix security became a growing problem. This came to a climax with the famous Internet worm 23 years ago. A handful of security flaws in several flavors of the OS, combined with some programming errors in the worm itself, caused a day long meltdown of systems across the United States. Then, computer security caught a lot of people's attention. The sole person responsible could never pay back the loss of time & labor for the havoc, which was - to make matters worse - accidental.
Going from mainframes to Apple II and the original IBM PC empowered users to do a lot but it also gave those same users more opportunities to steel, lose, or muss the integrity/coherence of data sets. Mainframes were probably much more secure but mainframes were not that empowering to users for ad hoc, urgent, mission-driven tasks.
Windows systems were faster and eventually had better graphics than Unix workstations.
Unfortunately, the creators of Windows were learning security as they went along and often made compromises for performance that made the system more vulnerable.
Initially, this was not a problem but then Windows suffered its own catastrophic worldwide worm event in 2001.
Web site defacement soon gave way to data theft malware. Worms and viruses soon evolved into botnet progenitors which were used to attack United States commercial & government infrastructure, often from foreign countries.
Going from a more secure to a less secure platform has never given the masses much pause. It does not seem to slow the adoption rate much, until something goes wrong.
One could argue today that some of our platforms are at a historic high of insecurity and reducing the problems it causes would be highly attractive. The situation did not exist in earlier grand scale OS switches so there is no basis for a weighted comparison.
What could happen is a historic drop in successful security attacks. But that takes work. Moving the bulk of processing to servers does not automatically make things more secure. So, it really depends on who designs the system and implements the code. And also who administrates it, as the Microsoft-Sidekick data meltdown of user data in a cloud demonstrates.
ChromeOS used as a cloud client could potentially take over a lot of computing done today on Windows or some other operating systems. Google could potentially do a fantastic job of it. Just as they have with advertising and mapping.
It does seem like it is years off. Time does fly.
Microsoft took a long hiatus from updating Windows, with the result that Mac market share surged up and Windows market share has steadily fallen.
Microsoft did the same thing with Internet Explorer, which allowed Firefox to be born and take over a huge amount of market share in a short time. It also gave Apple an opening to create its own browser, make it cross platform, and ultimately get its core into a lot of consumer devices and cell phones.
Microsoft and its licensees lost dominance of the portable MP3 player very swiftly. The iPod took it over. The mistake was not creating a truly easy to use user interface for the masses and being kind of flimsy. It did not evolve fast enough. The iPod store made shopping easy too. A multitude of competing vendors is NOT always a good thing. Apple got 70% of the music sales business in the United States. Music stores at shopping centers were no longer convenient or inexpensive. Clicking a button on your Mac & PC was.
Microsoft had some market share in the smart phone market. However, the iPhone came out of nowhere and quickly overtook it. Apple had once again improved its consumer electronics gear GUI mojo and created an enviable development platform, embedded OS/API, and app store. Again, by not going far enough but instead just putting something out there and licensing it - Microsoft failed.
Microsoft has sort of done the same thing with its Windows server OS. Apple has come out with a much, much less expensive which has most of the same core features. It might be a good deal safer to use than a server OS which uses the Windows OS as its heart and soul. Time will tell if it loses this battle too.
Microsoft has an interesting thing going on with its retail stores. They alone set the price for Windows that all OEMs pay, and at the same time they compete with those OEMs since they are a cut-and-dried PC VAR now. They can bleed OEM(s) dry now.
That distribution channel could pose a difficulty to Google. When ChromeOS PCs come out in a few years or whenever, consumer electronics stores might no longer be selling PCs so it might be hard to slip a another PC brand into them. Microsoft might use its control over PC pricing to drive those kind of stores out of business, capturing all the Windows PC retail sales for its brick & mortar and online sales.
So the big question now for ChromeOS is, will Microsoft once again play the tortoise with a product line, allowing a new company to virtually force them out of the market?
