Google operating system?
p2pnet.net News- Are Bill and the Boyz about to find Sergey and Larry as competitors in the operating system business?
CNET’s Charles Cooper thinks that’s a distinct possibility.
“Google’s execs aren’t dropping hints, but what’s to limit their ambition?” – he asks in his column “In its recently concluded quarter, the company pulled in net income of $342.8 million on $1.38 billion in sales. There’s money to fund Google’s wildest dreams.”
And, “Even if Google doesn’t want to go that far, there’s still the specter of how it might take center stage in what Tim O’Reilly describes as an ‘emergent Internet operating system’ formed from small pieces to create a platform for a new generation of applications,” says Cooper. “In other words, Netscape redux.”
But there’s something else to consider.
Like, who’s the toughest?
“They may be billionaires, but Sergey Brin and Larry Page are pikers in this business,” says Cooper. “When the heavy artillery starts to fly, the leadership needs to come from CEO Eric Schmidt. But I’m not at all convinced he’s got the right stuff. Here’s a guy who jumped ship when he couldn’t turn around Novell. Earlier, Schmidt was part of an executive team at Sun Microsystems that never could quite figure out how to beat Microsoft.
“Sorry, but he’s no Bill Gates …..”
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See:-
CNET – Whine from Google-Microsoft, July 29, 2005
July 30th, 2005 at 3:20 am
If google made an OS… I’d sure use it! ^_~
July 30th, 2005 at 11:08 am
I’d sure not use it
What about a company that makes money by cheating results in searches and not more able than the others to have you search a simple couple of words successfully without a shitload of crap unrelated things. Can they spell “artificial intelligence” ?
Billionaires all are criminals against humanity, they all deserve to go and fuck themselves
July 30th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Put fun back into computing,
Use GNU/Linux…
It’s not that difficult, even for a newbie!
July 30th, 2005 at 6:15 pm
I’d love to switch to Linux and free open source apps, but I realized I can’t because Microsoft owns me so completely. Games? Have to have Windows. Apps? Can’t do everything on Linux that I currently do on Windows. Plus last time I investigated, I got the impression that there were a lot of hoops to jump through just to get certain things working right. So many versions of Linux too, I have trouble figuring out where to start. With Linux I have to start all over again learning everything from scratch, and I’m already sick of all the troubleshooting I’ve done over the years. At least with Windows I know what I can do and where I stand. I really don’t think Linux will ever amount to anything more than an interesting footnote in history. It’s for the enthusiast who likes to experiment and that’s about all. It would have to be a whole lot more like Windows if you want average joe to switch over, that’s for sure. Sure love the idea of a free open source OS though. It’s a nice dream. I highly suspect the same would be true of a Google OS as well.
July 30th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
You can get a copy of Linspire for $50. It is a Linux version tha thas customer support, a large driver database (which is always being expanded), AND runs Windows programs!
There, now you hav eno excuse
July 30th, 2005 at 8:59 pm
I’m a relative newbee to Linux. I have run it for around 3 months. Like you I didn’t know where to start, what to do, or how to do. I don’t have the benefit of someone over my shoulder saying I should do this and not do that.
But I am fed up with the continual problems that face all windoze users. No matter how well you protect your computer, no matter how much money you throw at it, no matter how you change your habits; you face a continual barrage of malware and fixing. Making a home network only compounds the problem by multiples.
I love this idea of unwillingness to change when something proves to be unsatisfactory. You see it a lot with windoze users. As long as the problem proves to be one of unchanging steadfastness to the windoze OS, problems will continue to plague you. No matter how much time you spend learning the OS, no matter how good you get with it, a pigs ear is still not a silk purse and will never be. Windoze is so full of security holes that it will never be secure and the problems will never end. I have finally found peace of mind with Linux and surfing pleasure has returned. I love to see those 404 errors when some malware attempts to install yet another hidden toolbar. I love to see those messages that say my ip has been recorded (meaning they wanted to install more malware but it isn’t possible because I am not co-operating with them). They leave this wonderful message that if I feel this is in error I can email them. (like I really want spam) No, security and control has been returned to me and I once again control my box, not Bill and the Boyz.
I have learned in these few short months to be a Linux fanboy…
July 31st, 2005 at 10:07 pm
Billionaires all are criminals against humanity, they all deserve to go and fuck themselves
Yeah but il’d bet you’ld like to be one.
August 1st, 2005 at 6:32 pm
I’d be sure to try out Google OS if there gonna be one if it measures up against Windows XP (or Vista, a lame name in my opinion).
The only real obstacle for an OS to be successful is to convince 90% of the Windows user to give up Windows for another OS.
August 2nd, 2005 at 4:10 am
Games? Have to have Windows. Apps? Can’t do everything on Linux that I currently do on Windows
———-
I agree with you on the games. But apps? oh please. What major apps do you use that can’t be obtained either in a Linux version, or a remarkably similar, functional, and often FREE verison of the same software?
August 2nd, 2005 at 4:18 am
No, I’ve said this a thousand times. I’ll say it a thousand more.
Games.
Windows succeeded because of games. It was an Office OS before hand, something you booted to do some word processing, maybe a fax, but all the serious applications were for DOS, especially games. This made MS realize they had to support games, which is why their DOS was so popular.
Once they tied in the games, everyone jumped on board.
If Google was to put some of their considerable $$$$ on hand into wrangling games development support (Like MS, Ninento, Sony, etc have done over the years) then they could really make a Linux Distro (or some other similar GPL OS) that really rocked.
Linux needs games.. Not half-assed, “ooh I’m a Computer Scientists with no social skills and this copy of FREECIV is the shiznit” kind of games, but more Half-Life 2, Battlefield 2, Command and Conquer, Warcraft, Flight sims, racing games, etc, etc, etc.
Games. Build them for Linux, and the users will come.
Could you imagine if they released Half-Life 3 for Linux 3 months before they did it for MS-Windows? How many FPS addicts would install the game OS just to use the damned game!?!
Better yet, how about bootable CD games?
Holy crap, it’s the next killer App! Load CD, reboot, tiny, custom linux distro boots your game and runs it! Sheesh. It’s brilliant!
August 3rd, 2005 at 12:47 am
I always recommend the operating system as the last step in a migration. The tools which have the most “second hand smoke” effect (that what you do affects others) is applications such as your office productivity, email and browser.
I hand out copies of http://TheOpenCD.org as an alternative to business cards. It is Free/Libre Software (what makes Linux most interesting is that it is FLOSS, not that it is cool technology) that runs on Microsoft Windows.
August 3rd, 2005 at 12:57 am
I would love to have an accurate statistic on the percentage of current Windows PCs that actually run games. My guess is that it is less than 10% of the Windows machines currently running.
I assume you are primarily talking about the home market and not the (I’m told) much larger office/enterprise environment where running games would be entirely inappropriate.
I also suspect that having two separate computers, a dedicated game computer and a productivity/communications PC would be cheaper than having everything on one box. Hardware is cheap, but system administration is not — having to deal with a few Windows re-installs would pay for a separate game computer.
While this “Games” argument had some credibility for me a decade ago, I’m not so convinced it is relevant any more.
Then again, I don’t play games on my computer. I do know other people who do, such as the cool folks at http://www.transgaming.com/ who port games to Linux and provide software to run Windows games on Linux.
Major problem in porting and emulation? Attempts at the nonsense known as “copy protection”. If the game developers would just stop worrying about such things they would make more money. I can almost guarantee that they have lost more money due to software incompatibilities than they would have from the tiny amount of copyright infringement that these schemes deflect. The whole concept of “copy protection” was proven ineffective 20 years ago and nothing much has changed.