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Chrome OS proves Google can hype, but can it win?

Google becomes more like Microsoft every day. It used to be that only Microsoft could pre-announce a product to mass hysteria (and mass exodus of start-ups dabbling in the area), then proceed to under-deliver for the first few iterations of the product and still make billions in the process. With Google Chrome OS, Google has signaled that it, too, can over-commit and under-deliver and still mint billions.

Perhaps equally dismaying, as Anil Dash suggests, is that Google may be having “its Microsoft moment” and starting to develop software to work nicely with its other software…rather than actually building software that its customers want.

But let’s step back and strip away the frenzied media response to Google Chrome OS to determine what, exactly, Google announced: Google announced that it was shipping Ubuntu.

No, Google isn’t calling it Ubuntu, but Chrome OS is nothing more than the promise of an Ubuntu fork. Given that we have Ubuntu and plenty of other Ubuntu forks today, what’s the big deal?

Heck, for that matter, we also have Jolicloud, another Linux fork that promises to be an “Internet operating system” for Netbooks, just like Chrome OS. (Ubuntu makes largely the same claim.)

The difference, of course, is that you can actually use Jolicloud today (alpha version), unlike Chrome OS, and I’m actually typing this on an Ubuntu-based Netbook. (Incidentally, you’ve got to think that Jolicloud’s investors were kicking themselves last week when Google announced Chrome OS a day after they announced Jolicloud’s funding.)

So, Google will ship an Ubuntu fork, but one that presumably will come with its own secret sauce. Why? Well, as CNET’s Rafe Needleman generously suggests, because “The stakes are big enough that it’s worth the shot for Google.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

Let’s assume “Maybe.” This still leaves Google with the stated intent to tackle a Lilliputian market that only the Linux crowd seems to get excited about, which is why Barron’s slaps the idea around:

I think Google misunderstands the nature of netbooks, which simply are small, cheap, lightweight PCs. Early versions ran Linux, and didn’t sell. Once the netbook companies loaded them with Windows, sales picked up. On its last earnings call, Microsoft noted that the attach rate for Windows on netbooks had reached 90%. The people have spoken. Netbooks are a misnomer; while people do use them to connect with the Web, they use them for a lot of other things. Customers want netbooks to run standard software, including Office. And I doubt there will ever be a version of Office for Chrome OS.

Of course they won’t support Microsoft Office. They’re going to support Google Docs! (See “Microsoft moment” above.) Much as I like Google Docs, and much as I like OpenOffice and a range of alternatives to Microsoft Office, the reality is that if you don’t support Microsoft Office, you automatically limit the market appeal of your operating system, a lesson Apple learned. Apple’s support for Office was the beginning of its rise within enterprise computing.

It’s just incredibly hard to overcome the inertia of an incumbent in an established market. Google looks smart when it is changing the rules for computing (giving search away and charging for ads, moving e-mail to the cloud, etc.), but when it competes with Microsoft on its terms…it’s likely going to lose. Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler gives a hint as to why. (Spoiler: It’s the installed base, stupid):

New markets on the Web can emerge and grow really quickly. There’s lots of opportunity for something like Facebook to take over in just a few years. But that’s not really the case for PCs and desktop software. The installed base is just really, really large, and the growth and upgrade cycle are much much slower than with Web services.

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Windows 7 will give boost to PC hardware

Windows 7 will be more than just a better interface. Under-the-hood changes will allow chips from Intel, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to ratchet up Windows 7 performance above previous Microsoft operating systems.

Microsoft on Wednesday said it has finalized the code for Windows 7, set to ship with new PCs starting October 22. Improvements will include how Windows handles multitasking, graphics acceleration, and solid-state drives.

Microsoft is working closely with Intel, whose chips will power the vast majority of PCs running Windows 7. A July 22 post from Joakim Lialias, Intel Alliance Manager for Microsoft, described how Microsoft and Intel “saw unique opportunities to optimize Windows 7 for Intel processor technology” in the areas of performance, power management, and graphics.

In his blog, Lialias focused on improvements to multitasking based on “SMT Parking,” which provides additional support to the Windows 7 scheduler for Intel Hyper-threading Technology. With Hyper-threading, the operating system sees a single processor core as two cores. For example, a quad-core system would be seen as having eight cores, thus potentially improving multitasking–or doing tasks (threads) simultaneously.

Hyper-threading is back in vogue at Intel after being pulled from Intel Core 2 chips (it debuted in the Pentium 4 processor). Nehalem Core “i” series processors use Hyper-threading, as do Atom chips. Intel, in fact, now includes Hyper-threading as part of a chip’s core specifications. The Core i7-975 processor, for example, is listed as “4 Cores, 8 Threads.”

Lialias also mentioned enhancements to boot and shutdown times. “Our mutual goal was to provide the most responsive compute experience possible.” (Lialias’ blog was cited in a PC World article.)

Windows 7 will also do more than previous operating systems with graphics–and here, DirectX 11 stands out as the most highly anticipated technology. A recent AMD blog describes a “beast called the tessellator…which enables games developers to create smoother, less blocky and more organic looking objects in games.” The blog discusses how DirectX has been redesigned “to ensure that it is much more efficient” at using multicore processors, such as the AMD Opteron chip.

Beyond games, Windows 7 has the potential to turn a graphics processing unit (GPU) from AMD or Nvidia into a general-purpose compute engine, used to accelerate everyday computing tasks like a CPU. Specifically, “the compute shader” can be used to speed up more common computing tasks. The buzz word used to describe this technology is a mouthful: GPGPU or general-purpose graphics processing unit.

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