Windows will always rock!!

I foresee however, that they will be quite affected by developments such as the Chrome OS. The key is however that MS will have to make many changes as software is becoming every time more a commodity.

Regarding Android; well, that’s a completely different story. MS has never been a real player in the mobile market and the presence of WM5 and 6 are nothing more than anecdotes in a market lead by Nokia’s Symbian OS with a share of between 80 – 90%. The only alternative was until now the iPhone with it’s propietary OS and some flavours of Linux.

Android has actually started quites strongly in the EU hand in hand with the hardware producer HTC. I have been able to see the HTC Magic working and it’s really impressive, specially the Augmented Reality applications powered by Google Maps. If Android becomes a serious competitor of Symbian it can also become an advantage to have a desktop OS such as Chrome that seemingless integrates with Android. I would even be an advantage for mobile phone companies taht could integrate the same drivers and hardware used in Android mobile phones on netbooks, it would even be possible to simply extend Android modularly to be used as a desktop system. I have seen Android and it’s a full blown Linux system, it even has a propper shell (!)

As for wiping out Microsoft, it may not possible in any mid term future. Though not everything they are doing is ethical, they have an established desktop market (plus huge app + ISV support) that is not very easy to encroach into. As for the OS dedicated to netbooks, I doubt whether that will become a dedicated market at all – typically a desktop OS should be used for netbooks.

Having said this, let us see if cheap or free technology takes any shape in the recession hit market in the next one or two years

Google doen’t need to kill MS: as anything that grows big enough, they implode by themselves (vista is a clue;). Only dinosaurs (being huge) could survive long times and needed an external event to take them out (and they weren’t even human). On the other way, human monopolies fall by their inside (is Ballmer MS’s Nero? or is it the Titanic captain ?

I think this could be an turning point on Linux (as the one made by IBM in the late 90s ). The Desktop myth is no longer the same as it was 5 years ago; People are turning their lives towards computers, the industry is maturing (I don’t believe in ever growing systems, so the crisis of TI market will definitely arrive and some will die- ?ms?, …). I’m no expert in marketing but I believe this is the “known secure brand” that might take linux (as a Desktop to get things done, not be overkilled in features that 99% doesn’t use) to peoples computer (not mobile, router or other embedded use that people already have, although they ignore)

This chrome OS is the answer to Asus (and others??) criticism: “Android not good to netbook”.

Being FLOSS, I’ll give it a try when Debian/Chrome arrives
(no privacy issues will be raise then )

MS two main (and only) cash-cows are operating systems and MS Office. I’m not going to bash neiher XP nor Office: XP is a decent OS, overpriced but it does it’s job, and Office is a good piece of software. The alternatives are surely quite good too, specially OOo and Koffice, but office is still everywhere…

But now Google appears with first a set of applications with the same capability of Office: Spreadsheets, word processor and presentations… and it’s free. And despite that what somebody says some comments above, you can indeed store everything in your hard disks if you want too. There is indeed an increasing number of small companies here in the Netherlands that are saving money in Office licences using Google Apps.

I agree that the apps may not e as powerful as MS Office, but they do their job, are compatible and not only is it’s licence cost 0 but also the maintenance is 0 (somebody remembers Microsoft’s Cost Of Ownership FUD campaign some years ago?). And you can access it everywhere: From your Windows PC at work, your Mac at home or your Debian GNU/Linux laptop somewhere else, instantly.

The whole world of computer is changing, software is becoming a commodity and personal computers are becoming more than a way of storing software a way to accessing it. Microsoft with it’s windows and office is too bound to the hardware, to the physical computer and will have to fight an uphill battle to be able to win a competing position in the online world dominated by Google and the free software. It may well be the end, it will at least be the end of the software industry as we know it.

Moreover, expect that since Google search will always be bundled with the Chrome OS, you’ll always be giving up YOUR PRIVACY — everything you do, your entire session History, will be fed back right to Google.

What to do?

First, use Linux Mint 7. It is even more elegant and usable on the desktop and laptop than Ubuntu — http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linux/articles/23020.aspx

Second, fuse SRWare’s IRON as your browser – this is the Chrome browser but without any intrusion of your privacy – never any feeds back to Google about your session history!

Google chrome + google wave + google docs + … it is OS already.. just to put it together =) no wonder they came up with it.

I’ve heard, that there’ll be no popus etc. Google will just make many of more people using their current products, as these already contain adverts. And as it’ll be open source, I strongly believe in it.

However I’m a bit paranoic about this “leader of internet”, so I’ll keep on using multiple web search and gentoo, and try chromeOS at most in qemu to satisfy the curiosity =) .