Google’s one-of-a-kind computer network gives it a chance to surpass Microsoft to become the most dominant company in tech, according to the author of a recently published book on the search giant.
Google’s Grand Ambition
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Would be interesting to know just what they are up to. I haven’t been that impressed with their chat client however their world satellite map search is the coolest things since terraserver.
its beta. did you think google search was the coolest thing when it first appeared? most people didn’t.
he he
they look at it and see what they want to see.
people who are gaga over grids see google as a stealth grid company
people who hate microsoft see google as a antidote to anything MS
people who are linux freaks see google as a possible legitimizer for open source
firefox people keep saying “google browser!!”
etc etc etc
If you have some spare minutes, take a look at that – http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/
I am slightly dissapointed that Google hasn’t as yet seized the chance to compete with MS for the desktop.
A pure network computer isn’t very interesting in itself but a Linux box is capable of being both a thin and a thick client. This could make it more likely to take over the desktop from MS if google got more involved.
I would urge Google to join the Gnome Foundation, contribute resources and make XUL the ultimate developer platform for both thin and thick clients. It would take a lot of work but Google has the financial muscle to see it through.
I agree that it would be interesting for Google to do something on the desktop, but it makes no sense to join Gnome, where Mozilla is a much better fit for them
Google is an advertising company that regularly revitalizes its brand by engaging in “cool” expansion into every place it can place ads, fostering considerable interest in its “next move,” and thus its brand. As long as eyes look at pages served up by Google, they have no reason to care what operating system is used to do it. The threat of the possibility of Google as competition to Microsoft is enough to maintain investor interest and fuel countless discussions about the prospects of a Google platform (the same thing happened with Netscape and then later with Java).
Slapping advertising onto a Linux distribution built around any desktop environment won’t have any obvious advantage to the users of Google. People aren’t going to download and install “Google” onto their computer, not be able to use software that they use every day already, and think “Wow, Google is great.” Mac and Windows users that already don’t want to run Linux aren’t going to want to run Google Linux. It adds no value to the platform they can already use to them.
So really what you want is for Google to subsidize the development of Linux as a competitor to Windows and Mac OS X. There’s no clear advantage to Google to do this, because again most of their products are designed to attract as many eyes to as many ads as possible, not free you from the Microsoft dominion. The major real concessions are the desktop search utility and their Talk client, and those concessions have been firmly in favor of the Microsoft platform, not at its expense.
Google should make whatever business decisions it can to warrant its stock price, rather than be anyone’s Knight in Shining Armor.
Gnome have beagle as a search desktop
the problem is that GDS is far far better than other solutions proposed by gnome programmers
It’s likely they’ll use Linux as a thin client, rather than a full-blown desktop OS. It’s also likely that instead of attacking desktop PCs head on, they just outflank that market with a Google-branded smartphone running Linux.
But this would be assuming that controlling the client-side is in their plans at all. Maybe they think that the server-side is all they need … if that’s the case, then they better be planning on how to react when Microsoft starts leveraging their client-side dominance in their new MSN push.
The more likely role of Linux in all this is that if the supposed GoogleNet does become the future development platform, then it won’t matter which operating system you’re using to access it. In most cases where phrases like “doesn’t matter” and “good enough” start to apply, Linux comes into the picture.
The more likely role of Linux in all this is that if the supposed GoogleNet does become the future development platform, then it won’t matter which operating system you’re using to access it. In most cases where phrases like “doesn’t matter” and “good enough” start to apply, Linux comes into the picture.
Agreed. Google isn’t trying to attack MS head-on, all they’re trying to do is make the desktop irrelevant. Who cares if you’re accessing their services with Win, OSX, Linux or Symbian? They only care that you’re accessing their system.
The way I figure it, the last two waves of computing were driven first by personal computing and then by networked computing, and MS dominated the first and virtually dominated the second. The new wave will be application-based and driven by the need to process this incredible amount of information we’ve accumulated thanks to the first two waves.
Application-based computing can make the OS irrelevant, MS knows this very well which is why they a) integrate or hook applications into their OS and b) try to smother competitors before they can make inroads via new services or applications. MSN Search, the media initiatives etc. are irrelevant to Microsoft’s bottom line if they’re even profitable, they’re really about indirectly controlling their platform and not allowing potentially competitive services in.
Google knows this very well, they’re a very intelligent, strategic and intuitive company. It would be ridiculous for Google to waste resources trying to dislodge Windows on the desktop and even if they packaged a linux distro, it would likely be for the sake of doing so and not part of a grand strategy, there would be little to gain. Maybe some interesting PR and industry speculation at Microsoft’s expense, but little else.
What they need to do is weaken Microsoft’s ability to make the OS “the thing”. Nibble at them here, nip at them there but do not attack them head on, not yet. As people become more accustomed to using Google on their PC’s, and on their smartphones, and in hotspots etc., it makes a natural progression to start hooking them more and more. To me, salesforce.com is a perfect example of how a business can be built on an application driven service separate from the desktop and it shows that businesses are willing to trust a web-based application when driving a core part of their business. And that’s what gives Microsoft nightmares.
Search is one thing, and it’s certainly Google’s bread and butter for now. But Microsoft’s battle with Google over search goes far beyond that service itself, it’s about keeping google out. Period.
Now, the question is what will Google do to turn this googlenet into a profitable business delivery system? I can’t see it being all advertising based, and the one hole google is digging themselves into is a captive customer base that has become accustomed to “free” services.
Of course, this is mostly speculation on my part and I’m not going to be foolish enough to guess at this point where this will ultimately lead, though. Too soon to tell. But it could be an interesting ride for all of us…
Agreed. Google isn’t trying to attack MS head-on, all they’re trying to do is make the desktop irrelevant. Who cares if you’re accessing their services with Win, OSX, Linux or Symbian? They only care that you’re accessing their system.
You’re missing an important point though. The desktop isn’t irrelevant because the desktop is how people access these services/apps.
The fact is that HTML/CSS/JavaScript/XHTMLRequest is still far too primitive to compare to real desktop applications. Go back in the comments to see the XUL, Amazon search app that I posted. Something like that is what, but ubuiquitous and even more powerful.
But it’s a moot point unless Google can do something similiar for IE. That’s where XAML comes in. In theory, it seems that it would be possible for Google to write wrappers to generate the XML. But who knows when IE7 will be XAML enabled, and then there’s the whole legacy crap.
The bottom line is that the desktop does matter, and Google really isn’t a threat in the short-term until browser functionality is up to snuff and ubiquotous(sic?).
Actually, I don’t think you have any idea what GNOME programmers have proposed regarding beagle. Beagle allows an insane amount of personal data be searched but more importantly, that search capacity can be added to any application. This means that potential for finding things on your desktop does not stop at files. There is no reason beagle couldn’t allow a search tool that searches through code for algorithms or searches through files for email addresses and links to web sites from a specific domain. Beyond that, there is no tie whatsoever to the web browser interface. There are endless possibilities regarding how developers can show results which means they can be easier to parse and use.
I have tried GDS and it has its good points. My main problem is saying that GNOME programmers have not proposed developing tools that are as good as GDS. I am confident that GNOME and Beagle have created something that can go well beyond what GDS can ever do.
XUL?
I once made an XUL application. It was using 30MB before I’d even got it doing anything.
I don’t see any kind of ‘thin’ client running many XUL applications. Firefox is bad enough.
XUL really doesn’t offer much.
Why mozilla decided to make an operating system and try to pass it off as a browser has never made sense to me.
– Jesse McNelis
A search engine with a little cash, and now it’s going to overthrow MS. I guess this guy has to hype his book anyway he can.
A search engine with a little cash, and now it’s going to overthrow MS. I guess this guy has to hype his book anyway he can.
They have a product everybody uses and a tonload of cash – that’s exactly how MS got started on their road to domination. Buying your way into new markets is the next step. Forcing everybody else out is the last.
I’m not saying Google will go the same way MS did, but I will say that everybody looking starry-eyed to their ‘do no evil’ motto is more than a little naive.
Actually all comapnies go the way MS will. Once you are in a market the goal is to dominate… if the little guy gets crushed, oh well. Your job at that point is to make money and keep growing. Eventually your company is going to get a little fat and need to go on a diet. If MS does things right they should be able to bounce back from their recent set-backs. The world is changing and companies need to be agile, MS is a bit over-weight. Google on the other hand just got their first steak dinner and wants to eat yours too!
On the website dedicated to the book:
Price for online download access is US$180 or 145 euros.
Seems a bit high. And by a bit high, I actually mean so high it makes Courtney Love look sober(and sane). I wonder if anyone is actually going to purchase the book.
I noticed the same thing. Whose going to pay that much for a book (is he insane). Especially when he throws out random junk comments like:
Google’s one-of-a-kind computer network gives it a chance to surpass Microsoft to become the most dominant company in tech
Microsoft’s core business is still MS Windows and Office Suite related. Google is not going to compete with MS on either of those terms. As far as Google encroaching on MSN, isn’t that what Yahoo! is better set to do with movies, games, and online communities.
Google’s biggest tech dominance is search (this is how it makes its ad revenue) and still Yahoo is competitve on this front as the two goliaths often argue over whose bigger.
I’ve heard it said before that Google is going after MS and that Yahoo is going after AOL, but both concepts are utter garbage. Some of Google’s newest toys are specifically meant for MS Windows users (desktop search) and no one needs to go after AOL, as they are killing themselves with premium rates for poor service.
People who drop such bombs obviously don’t understand how truly big the sandbox is. Ten years from now there will be some newer company and everyone is going to be saying the same thing then about how its fighting the establishment of Google, Yahoo, and MS (hopefully AOL will have either completely transformed or have died out); but if its truly a good product with good marketing and brand recognition, its best aspiration will be to play wiht the other corporations in the sandbox and only compete on limited fronts.
Indeed ! Why would I spend 145 euros for a PDF file which I have to print myself when I can get, for instance, the the printed C++ language guide (translated to dutch) for 35 euro’s ?
In short, from early on, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page resourcefully figured out how to cluster lots of cheap servers and open-source software, configured to act like individual light bulbs on a Christmas tree that can be added or replaced without making the whole tree go dark, according to Arnold.
Very clever indeed
Think web utilities. Google already has gmail, talk earth, a highly advanced search, picaso, and google video. The fist aim of google will be to make all information accessable(see google books scholarly etc..) then release the google web browser to compete with existing ones. After that they take a step and use xul in the browser to run all of their utilities (everything is brower contained). Then they use this and adaot an existing OS to put it on; one with good support for hardware and that can run on almost everything(hint: linux). Doing this they take over general computing. Then they spealize it for the different platforms. And make the user accounts availabe from anywhere(wherever you go if you have access to the web you can immedietly resume. There yu have it the computers we are used to are only used as worksations for graphics editing and programming. I call it the Google Grid.
You’re on the right track. That’s why I said get in bed with Mozilla and not Gnome. Think of GMail with an XUL interface like this http://www.faser.net/mab/chrome/content/mab.xul
Now if IE7 is XAML-enabled they could even provide a backend for that too.
Damn! I heard about that app, though I never tried it. That is slick.
Google has some good applications and all but nothing really “must have” except the search. I really don’t see them surpassing Microsoft as the dominant tech company unless they start aiming for what businesses need. As it stands now I think most of their apps are home user based. Google chat is ok, not something that could be used in the corporate environment, nor Maps, or desktop search. Yes they can work in that environment, just not very well. They need one of three things, an OS, a business package/suite, or a delivery platform to really compete an surpass MS. The rest is just fun utils to play with.
All I want is Google to roll out free WiFi access to the world. Bring us the future, Google, bring us the mother fucking future!
I just have one word for how google will end up.
Googlezon
They simply have to throw away their http://www.msn.com and put a single easy google-like search box there.