Google Chrome OS?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/technology/companies/08operate.html

7/8/2009 1:23:30 AM

It's almost like a WebOS. Honestly suprised it's taken them this long to announce this officially.

I've been writing/postulating this (as has every other techie) for the past few years.

1) Google creates a thin client application platform
2) Google creates a thin client operating system
3) Google launches a premium serviced internet access platform
4) Google starts charging monthly access to the "google net"
5) Google either becomes a huge monopoly to rival MS, or people abandon them in droves because they finally charged consumers for something

7/8/2009 1:29:00 AM

what is this googlenet you speak off

is that like the kind of internet that aol makes that gets into your bios and tries to boot off of your wristwatch

7/8/2009 4:38:08 AM

I don't think it will be the same tact as AOL (provide unique content, plus a portal to the net).

I think it will be almost the inverse (provide unique indexes through a net portal), and I think the revenue model is much more likely to be akin to ESPN, than AOL. That is, Google will just charge the ISP's to leverage it's services, and the ISP will pass that cost on to the consumer.

Give it a couple more years to simmer. What the hell is Comcast going to do if Google says "pay us a dollar per subscriber per month, or we will block our services to your customers". They'll pay up, otherwise everyone will abandon them for the competition that has Google services.

7/8/2009 4:43:43 AM

Google has absolutely no reason to charge monthly access for individual/non-profit users. Never has, likely never will. Stop with the silly speculation

7/8/2009 4:51:25 AM

Fuck the idea of all my docs and info being 100% on the web.

7/8/2009 7:15:02 AM

^^It ain't silly at all. Just wait

7/8/2009 8:56:53 PM

^^

welcome to the cloud son!!

7/8/2009 9:23:26 PM

I don't think Google will follow your steps Noen, lol. They will be a juggernaut no doubt, but users will own their own data.

7/8/2009 9:25:23 PM

I like the basic idea. But I'm not sure I understand why I should give up the ability to run non-web apps for a little bit more speed when browsers are pretty fast anyway.

[Edited on July 8, 2009 at 9:43 PM. Reason : atewrwer]

7/8/2009 9:43:09 PM

Quote :

"Google has absolutely no reason to charge monthly access for individual/non-profit users. Never has, likely never will. Stop with the silly speculation "

Apparently Noen and I are the only people who seem to remember that Google is a publically traded company, and they have two goals: MAKE MONEY, KEEP STOCK PRICE HIGH. All the rest is PR dressing to delude you into thinking they're a benevolent beast, and to distract you from realizing that their model isn't any different from every other company from the dot-com bubble.

If Google were to start charging a penny a search, you would pay it. What are you gonna do? Use Bing?

7/8/2009 9:50:38 PM

subscribe to my newsletter at http://www.google-watch.org/

7/8/2009 9:51:38 PM

Quote :

"I don't think Google will follow your steps Noen, lol. They will be a juggernaut no doubt, but users will own their own data."

It has nothing to do with owning your own data. Although, if you use Google docs, you don't really. It's about SERVICES ACCESS.

And I would be very suprised if they charged consumers directly. I'd bet my left cheek they will bundle the access costs in with internet access of some sort. On mobile, it'll be bundled with the data service. On PC's it'll be bundled with the ISP. Either the ISPs will eat the cost, or they will raise prices to adjust for it. That's my bet

7/8/2009 10:25:29 PM

idk i'm kinda excited about this thin client + cloud computing shift.

I always knew google would do this at some point, but (in my opinion) the whole SaaS paradigm will be perfect for a majority of PC and home users.

7/8/2009 10:37:20 PM

Quote :

"That is, Google will just charge the ISP's to leverage it's services, and the ISP will pass that cost on to the consumer."

Which services? Can you elaborate on this business model more rather than talking in platitudes.

Are you saying that we're all going to give up our client apps for googles apps? Could ISPs not just throttle traffic headed for google making their server side apps undesirable for use? Google wouldn't want that. No, they want charge ISPs for the access, they'll do what they have been doing all along, continue to offer an ad of some sort alongside your spreadsheet.

7/8/2009 10:50:55 PM

It all starts with search.

Google has 90% marketshare on search, and 65% marketshare on consumer webmail. All they need is ONE deal with a major ISP or telco, and it's set in motion.

If ISPs degraded service to google offerings, people would leave in droves.
If Google cuts access off to ISPs for its basic services (google.com, gmail), people will leave in droves. I imagine this will happen in highly competitive markets first, where 3+ vendors are vying for a leg up on the competition.

But again, I think this is a solid 3-5 years.

7/8/2009 11:02:36 PM

Quote :

"Google has 90% marketshare on search, and 65% marketshare on consumer webmail. All they need is ONE deal with a major ISP or telco, and it's set in motion. "

What "deal"? To charge per search or for the OS? I suppose if google can get pennies per customer per month for what it wants to monetize, then yeah, you probably have a point. But if it means an additional $10 (or even $5), then bada bam bada bing. I'm done with google. If google actually becomes evil enough to start charging me for my email in some way that is more than pennies, I'll jump ship there, too, though I could see how a lot of other less tech savvy people could do this.

Quote :

"If ISPs degraded service to google offerings, people would leave in droves."

No, the people wouldn't even know about googles offerings because the service would be degraded before they had a chance to adopt them. The whole point of that effort by the ISP is to make it where people won't demand google services because the experience will be shitty, not an ex post facto effort.

Quote :

"If Google cuts access off to ISPs for its basic services (google.com, gmail), people will leave in droves. I imagine this will happen in highly competitive markets first, where 3+ vendors are vying for a leg up on the competition"

Weird, so google would voluntarily stop serving ads (its cash cow) to people? Wonder how well that would go over with shareholders.

7/8/2009 11:24:40 PM

Quote :

"If ISPs degraded service to google offerings, people would leave in droves. "

leave for what? You act like there's any worthwhile options available. before U-Verse came to my neighborhood, TWC could have throttled my google access back 70% and it still would have been faster than switching to the next fastest ISP available.

7/9/2009 12:20:37 AM

No one is talking about the most important part of this whole thing...
The opportunity they have to shorten the name "Google Operating System" into "GOOSE"

[Edited on July 9, 2009 at 12:39 AM. Reason : yes, I know they're already calling it Chrome -- not the point.]

7/9/2009 12:35:56 AM

Quote :

"If Google were to start charging a penny a search, you would pay it."

No I wouldn't and neither would many people I work with. A different free search would take it's place immediately without looking back. Money talks. We will see what happens.

7/9/2009 7:36:43 AM

my wifi isn't reliable enough for me to use a web-based OS on a netbook

now on a desktop, sure, that's fine

7/9/2009 8:12:15 AM

Quote :

"No one is talking about the most important part of this whole thing... The opportunity they have to shorten the name "Google Operating System" into "GOOSE""

FAIL

i'm gonna install it on my netbook when it comes out. the only reason i ordered it w/ xp instead of ubuntu was to tether to my moto q. i have an iphone now so that's not something i need to do anymore. yay google!

yall need to get your panties out of a wad. they haven't started charging for anything and as far as i'm aware they haven't announced any plans too. don't get all bent out of shape over something that hasn't happened.

[Edited on July 9, 2009 at 8:23 AM. Reason : ]

7/9/2009 8:21:30 AM

i'm waiting for Moblin for my netbook

7/9/2009 8:38:23 AM

as long as the chrome browser is a priority for google, google will never charge for basic search

google has an interest in the chrome browser capturing more of the browser market share

the era of the commercial browser is over and will probably never return

ergo chrome will most likely remain free

one of the chrome browser's key features for the typical user is the integrated google search in the omnibox

the omnibox's default treatment of a malformed, invalid, or otherwise unrecognizable URI is to perform a google search for the string

which greatly increases your typical user's ability to successfully complete his browsing tasks

and incidentally exposes him to more google ads

nobody's gonna use a free browser whose major usability feature costs money

therefore

as long as the chrome browser remains a priority for google

google will never charge for basic search

Q.E.D.

7/9/2009 9:48:00 AM

^

Exactly, and if they do, people will jump ship with a quickness and find a free alternative.

7/9/2009 10:19:56 AM

I thought the point was that google wasn't going to charge users per search, but bill the ISP (similar to the way ESPN demands payment for service access per customer). This, in turn, gets passed down to the user in higher rates. You will see service/price battles between TWC & Google instead of just TWC & ESPN (like we had with ESPNU, ESPN360, and HD offerings). Rate hikes make the ISP/cable co. look bad, not the end services demanding more money.

7/9/2009 12:33:57 PM

CONSUMER-FRIENDLY ONION ROUTING BECOMES THE KILLER APP

7/9/2009 12:39:32 PM

^^nice to see at least one person understands what I'm talking about.

I'd bet none of you rubes with cable have any clue that ESPN alone costs you 2-5 bucks per month of your basic cable bill, depending on market. ESPN accounts for 10-20% of the cost of basic cable.

Dear lord, for college educated people, you guys are pretty naive. If their OS doesn't suck, the first deals we are likely to see are netbooks bundled with Internet service, similar to what the telcos are starting to do, although much much more expensively. Just like bundling a set top box with cable tv, guess what, You are paying for google.

They have so many ways to break into to the service fee bundling market, it really is only a matter of time, and likely none of you tards will ever even realize it's happened.

7/9/2009 1:30:42 PM

even assuming that we are in fact naive retards or whatever the fuck you just said

you're the one comparing the internet to cable television

which is about as apt an analogy as comparing halley's comet to a tree frog

7/9/2009 1:34:16 PM

Quote :

"1) Google creates a thin client application platform 2) Google creates a thin client operating system 3) Google launches a premium serviced internet access platform 4) Google starts charging monthly access to the "google net" 5) Google either becomes a huge monopoly to rival MS, or people abandon them in droves because they finally charged consumers for something becomes self-aware"

7/9/2009 1:37:06 PM

Quote :

"I'd bet none of you rubes with cable have any clue that ESPN alone costs you 2-5 bucks per month of your basic cable bill, depending on market. ESPN accounts for 10-20% of the cost of basic cable."

Is this an actual fact or a POOTA ('pulled out of tyler's ass') fact?

7/9/2009 1:38:02 PM

Quote :

"even assuming that we are in fact naive retards or whatever the fuck you just said you're the one comparing the internet to cable television which is about as apt an analogy as comparing halley's comet to a tree frog"

Except it's the same providers for both, on the same data networks, which are slowly merging into single-service offerings (FiOS, U-verse,etc).

Quote :

"Is this an actual fact or a POOTA ('pulled out of tyler's ass') fact?"

Hopefully the New York Times is legitimate enough for you, although a quick search of Google will net you several thousand articles about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/business/media/24nocera.html?_r=1&ex=1353560400&en=a362ab94b8687400&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

And you are already likely paying for bundled services with your ISP, and don't even know it. There are several large content providers already using the push model on ISPs. It's not ubiquitous yet, because so far all the content pushes have been in specific market segments, not for content that users EXPECT to be available to them.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/espn-stands-fir/

7/9/2009 1:55:47 PM

Quote :

"Hopefully the New York Times is legitimate enough for you, although a quick search of Google will net you several thousand articles about it."

It's better than you usually do, at least this time, 2-5 is in the ballpark of 3.

Quote :

"'d bet none of you rubes with cable"

I suspect most of us here know that the content providers charge the cable networks for their content. What we're trying to figure out, and you've yet to really illustrate, is how google muscles its way into this position, decades behind its competition...when it's main bread and butter is selling ads on top of free stuff.

7/9/2009 2:46:16 PM

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds, this google net. The makings of a huge monopoly by charging the backbone carriers for google services access. The only thing you have left out of your equation is the global implementation of this huge feat, which is a fairly important component. Either way, I certainly hope you're wrong about google charging for searches, regardless of the methods for payment.

7/9/2009 3:26:20 PM

Quote :

"...when it's main bread and butter is selling ads on top of free stuff."

Unless/until it manages to figure out how to get into the brand ad campaign space (and those deep pockets), Google's going to have to diversify it's income as it grows. It's pretty much capped out the opportunities for user targeted advertising. youtube was supposed to be a key property into that area, but so far it's been a pretty massive failure.

There's also going to be a problem if/when they move into the consumer cloud space, in coming up with a reliable revenue model to keep up the infrastructure required for it. I think a lot of it is going to be offset with their app platforms (I definitely see a google apps marketplace for vendors) but I don't know how lucrative that can really be for them.

7/9/2009 6:11:25 PM