Just What Is Google Doing with Two OS’s?
by Wyatt WalterI just got done reading TechFlash’s account of Steve Ballmer’s comments regarding the newly announced Google Chrome OS project and he raised some good questions. Now, I have about as high opinion of Ballmer as the next open source person, but when the CEO of the largest operating system maker in the world speaks, you better at least entertain what he has to say. You can view the webcast here, but here’s the money quote:
The last time I checked you don’t need two client operating systems. We tried it before. Windows 95 and Windows NT. It’s good to have one. So I can’t.. I don’t really know what’s up at Google.
Obviously Steve knows about as much as the rest of us about Chrome and if he knows any more, he’s not saying. He calls into question Google’s strategy with building two different products with a bit of overlap on netbooks. He has a good point there. Microsoft’s tried it and failed with having a home and professional edition. But, what about Windows CE, Windows Mobile, and Windows Vista? You can’t tell me that those are the exact same code base. Two of those run on embedded devices that have processors measured in Megahertz and memory measured in Megabytes. Vista barely runs on a machine with 2 Gigabytes of RAM, a fairly new processor, and has a minimum of 15 GB of hard drive space.
Okay, so Microsoft is doing the same thing, just much more quietly. But why would Google? It’s quite simple, really. They were built for different purposes. Of course, I can only speculate, but I’m guessing that since the two are meant to serve two completely different needs, it would be a waste for them both to contain code that’s not shared. A waste of hard drive space, memory, and processing time. Each of those will contribute to a slower-running OS. Chrome is supposed to be built as an OS for web-applications, not for local applications. Cell phones are a world of local apps that utilize web services, especially in a world where network connectivity isn’t always all that fast on cell phone networks.
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Tags: chrome, windows
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Jul 15th, 2009
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