It is the technology industry's equivalent of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Google, the web upstart founded 11 years ago, has announced it will go head-to-head with Microsoft with an operating system (OS) – the programs that make a computer work – for machines ranging from handhelds up to desktop computers.If Google can get enough people to buy computers running its new Chrome OS, it will cut into Microsoft's two biggest cash cows: Windows and its Office suite of programs, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft, which once spoke of "cutting off the air supply" of a web-based rival, Netscape, has woken up to find a new threat reaching for its throat.The confrontation has been expected for years – despite Google's insistence it had no such ambitions – but it still caught observers by surprise when a Google spokeswoman confirmed to IT news service IDG that it plans to announce this week the names of computer makers in Taiwan and China signed up to work with Chrome OS, and said that it will show off Chrome's user interface later this year.The challenge to Microsoft is implicit, yet also direct. In a blog post, Sundar Pichai, Google's vice-president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, explained that "the operating systems that browsers [used to access pages on the web] run on were designed in an era when there was no web". That is a swipe at Windows, which dates back to the 1990s. Pichai and Upson also promise that with Chrome OS, "we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS" to ensure that "users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates" – another swipe.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
* News * Technology * Google Google's new platform Chrome aims to show Microsoft's Windows the door
It is the technology industry's equivalent of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Google, the web upstart founded 11 years ago, has announced it will go head-to-head with Microsoft with an operating system (OS) – the programs that make a computer work – for machines ranging from handhelds up to desktop computers.If Google can get enough people to buy computers running its new Chrome OS, it will cut into Microsoft's two biggest cash cows: Windows and its Office suite of programs, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Microsoft, which once spoke of "cutting off the air supply" of a web-based rival, Netscape, has woken up to find a new threat reaching for its throat.The confrontation has been expected for years – despite Google's insistence it had no such ambitions – but it still caught observers by surprise when a Google spokeswoman confirmed to IT news service IDG that it plans to announce this week the names of computer makers in Taiwan and China signed up to work with Chrome OS, and said that it will show off Chrome's user interface later this year.The challenge to Microsoft is implicit, yet also direct. In a blog post, Sundar Pichai, Google's vice-president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, explained that "the operating systems that browsers [used to access pages on the web] run on were designed in an era when there was no web". That is a swipe at Windows, which dates back to the 1990s. Pichai and Upson also promise that with Chrome OS, "we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS" to ensure that "users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates" – another swipe.
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