Google's Chrome May Shift the OS Landscape

Google is hosting an event today to offer the first official glimpse at the Chrome operating system. Chrome has ignited enthusiasm in an operating system market that has been largely stagnant for years. Google may succeed in shaking things up a bit.

By Tony Bradley
Thu, November 19, 2009

PC World — Google is hosting an event today to offer the first official glimpse at the Chrome operating system. Chrome has ignited enthusiasm in an operating system market that has been largely stagnant for years. Google may succeed in shaking things up a bit.

When you mention Google in conjunction with any upcoming tool or service it tends to draw some attention. When you put Google in the same sentence with 'new operating system'--directly challenging Microsoft in a market it has mercilessly dominated for decades--the rumor mill kicks into high gear. Vegas may even be taking odds.

For all of the speculation and rumors, there is little that is really known about the Chrome OS. There have been fake Chrome OS downloads, spoofed screenshots, and a seemingly endless stream of hearsay and conjecture based on virtually nothing.

Hopefully that will change today when Google shows off a demo of the current state of Chrome. Ironically, whether or not Google will use the press event to announce availability of an early beta of the operating system is also a point of speculation. It seems safe to assume that we will at least know more about the Chrome OS than we do now.

Let's go ahead and join the speculation party, though. For a change of pace, though, we won't gossip about rumors regarding the operating system itself. Instead, we'll ponder what impact a Google Chrome OS can truly hope to have on the operating system market.

The war between Microsoft and Apple for computer platform dominance predates both the Windows and Mac operating systems. The battle between Windows and Mac has been a source of passionate debate since....well, since the Windows and Mac operating systems have existed. Even earlier if you consider the embryonic days of Windows when it was just a graphic environment that was installed over the MS-DOS operating system.

Linus Torvalds developed the Linux kernel in 1991. Linux did not really reach the mainstream until Red Hat succeeded in achieving some level of commercial success with it around 2000. There are a wide variety of Linux builds available today. Arguably the most popular currently is Ubuntu Desktop from Canonical.

So, the Microsoft-Apple rivalry dates back to the mid or early 80's, and the Windows-Linux debate goes back at least 10 years. For all of the passion and heated discussion on the topic of operating systems you would think they should be fairly even in market share.

The reality is that all versions of Mac and all versions of Linux combined make up barely more than six percent of the total operating system market. Even with a price tag of 'free' Linux has not managed to capture even one percent. Windows, on the other hand, occupies a healthy 92-plus percent of the market. Maybe Google can succeed where Apple and Linux have failed?

1 2 next page »

What is Tech Briefcase?

TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more

Bookmark content

Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.

Search and Store

Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.

View Anywhere

Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.

Don't have an account yet?

You are here: Technology Topics » News

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

Finding the right cloud solutions for your organization

HP is driving the evolution of what we call the Instant-On Enterprise. It is an enterprise that embeds technology into everything it does to better serve citizens, partners, employees, and clients. We believe that today's Instant-On Enterprises need to think differently about how they source and deliver services that are enabled by technology. They need to take advantage of a hybrid delivery model-one that truly optimizes the mix between traditional IT, private cloud, and public cloud.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Converged Infrastructure for Dummies

As you know, everything is mobile, connected, interactive, and immediate. This is exactly why organizations need a highly agile IT infrastructure in order to keep pace with extreme fluctuations in business demand. This book will help you understand why infrastructure convergence has been widely accepted as the optimal approach for simplifying and accelerating your IT to deliver services at the speed of business while also shifting significantly more IT resources from operations to innovation.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Seven Priorities for Integrated Network Management - How HP Intelligent Management Center Delivers an Enterprise-class Solution

This white paper describes the major requirements for network management solutions to help the organizations become more profitable, efficient and reliable.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Measuring the Business Value of CI in the Data Center

One of the key strategies that IT teams are pursuing to reduce capital costs while boosting asset utilization and employee productivity is the transition to highly virtualized data centers. However, IDC finds that expectations for further boosts in IT asset use and operational efficiency often surpass the actual results for a variety of reasons. These problems can quickly overwhelm any hoped-for benefits as the scope of virtual server deployment expands.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Building Cloud-Optimized Data Center Networks white paper

Enterprises are turning to the Cloud to improve business agility, reduce expenses and accelerate business innovation. Cloud computing redefines the way IT assets are deployed and consumed and dramatically affects the way data center networks are architected and managed. Conventional hierarchical data center networks built to support traditional IT architectures can't meet the security, agility and price/performance requirements of virtualized cloud computing environments. This white paper reviews the impact of cloud computing on data center networks and describes HP's approach to building simpler, more secure and automated networks that fully meet the stringent performance, security, reliability and agility demands of the new data center in the Cloud.

Intel and the Intel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

The Forrester Wave: Activities Streams, Q2 2012

The enterprise social software market is exploding thanks to converging trends of consumerization, cloud, and mobile. In this must-read report, "The Forrester Wave: Activities Streams, Q2 2012", Forrester Research Inc. evaluated five social software vendors with core strengths in the stream based on the overall strength of vendors' current offerings, a clear product strategy, and vendor market presence. In a detailed look at the space, Forrester named Yammer as a leader.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Oracle Database Appliance Best Practices

Business users increasingly demand 24x7 availability of their data while IT departments face the challenge of ensuring maximum availability while operating with limited budgets.

Unlock the Value of Cloud Computing with Workload Automation

Learn how to get the most from your cloud investment in our on-demand webinar from BMC and InformationWeek. You'll hear how integrating the cloud into your production workload brings critical business benefits.

Best Practices to Optimize Your Data Center at Every Layer of the Stack

Date: May 31, 2012
Time: 1 PM EST

Organizations are reaping the benefits of simplifying IT, lowering costs and dramatically improving transactional throughput by deploying optimized application-to-disk solutions. These pre-tuned, tested solutions encompass a wide variety of applications and use cases. Hear from industry experts, and IT executives, how these full-stack solutions can achieve three times faster deployment times and up to 75% reductions in acquisition and operational costs.

Workload Automation Trends and Best Practices in 2012

Find out when you join EMA Senior Analyst, Torsten Volk, for a discussion on the 2012 trends in workload automation and how these trends contribute to better connecting workload automation to business processes. These trends are derived from EMA's empirical research work conducted for the 2012 Workload Automation Radar Report.

Analytics at the Speed of Thought

What if you could run financial and operational planning cycles 10 times faster? Or monitor and adjust marketing campaigns in real time? What if you could instantly visualize how a price change would impact the profitability of thousands of products?

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter