Friday, February 05, 2010
Thinking about Google's Chrome OS and Similar Offerings

So how about Google’s Chrome OS? Interesting idea, isn’t it? (Although not very original and certainly not something Google invented). Create a device with a closed OS that launches straight into the browser as a pure web device. A solid state drive will make booting a very fast operation. No software installs mean no hassles (at least in theory). One is always online anyway, or so the theory goes, so why ever install a rich client app?

For many users, this may be pretty close to the truth. However, and that much is clear, HTML apps are not really great apps. From a UI design point-of-view, they outright suck. Sure, we have come a long way in making HTML UIs better, and we sure are pushing the limits with AJAX and advanced client-side scripting, but at the end of the day, we are still stuck in a fairly outdated world of HTML that was never all that great, even when it was new. Even simple Windows UIs often provide much better user experiences, and they are much less labor intensive to build. But I digress.

So for many scenarios, users will be happy with web browsers, but at the same time, they are losing the ability to do anything on their machines. No Word documents to create, no Outlook, no games to play. Will users really be happy using Google docs and Outlook Web Access? Personally, I know I wouldn’t. Nobody I know would. But then maybe I just don’t know the right people. I am sure some people really value not having to install anything as it also brings the benefit of not accidently installing viruses locally. (Although Facebook shows that viruses and other malware can also make it into online offerings, and Chrome OS won’t be immune to those sort of attacks either. And neither will any other system for that matter. Take that, Mac!).

I really do wonder about the user experience though. I can’t see myself using just HTML-based apps. Sure, HTML may improve. After all, HTML5 is on the horizon and there is hope of adoption of those new features. Especially on Google’s side (who is behind HTML5, after all). Although in general, pushing a new HTML standard is a very difficult undertaking, as there simply is no way to force all the clients to update (which now include anything from Windows machines to mobile devices such as phones and Kindles). So it will be a very long time before HTML5 really becomes significant. And “oh by the way”, how are you going to get a new browser with HTML5 support onto your Chrome OS Netbook? Well, there will be some update ability, which weakens the “no install” story considerably. How much you can update the OS and its components (such as the browser) will probably depend on the OS vendor (as Google is not the only one playing in this market), but the situation is clear: Either you allow (update) installs and are more susceptible to security problems (with a weaker advantage on the maintenance side), or you can’t update, turning the machine into a brick every time something new is coming out. (Perhaps with the ability to re-flash the device at the original vendor, similar to the situation with some phones today).

Of course the no-install-story also means very poor support for technologies like Silverlight and Flash. After all, how are you going to get that technology on your device, and how are you updating it? And forget about running any offline apps, no matter how great those features are in Silverlight 3 and 4!

One of the biggest question in terms of Google’s success with the Chrome OS is “how will they build customer affinity”? If you are a Windows user, you identify with that OS. Same if you are a Mac user. Your next PC is likely going to be a Windows or Mac PC again, unless you have a really good reason to abandon that platform and your investment in it. If you are a pure web-OS user on the other hand, then who cares what OS you are using? You might go from Chrome OS to some other vendor of a web-OS. You will probably hardly know the difference. Or you might go to Mac or Windows as you grow tired of not having a strong offline story. Anything that installs on the client ties the user to that platform. If it wasn’t for all the apps, I might have long tried a phone other than the iPhone again (as there are now offerings with similar feature sets to the original iPhone), but the apps keep me there. “What if there isn’t an equivalent of Shazzam”? I often think. Substitute the app(s) of your choice. You get the idea.

If you have something client-specific, you care about the client. Otherwise, clients become interchangeable, which is bad news if you are the company invested in creating the client technology/device.

Frankly, even if Google’s idea with the web-OS flies, I would have much higher hopes for someone like Apple to capitalize on it. After all, Google is an advertisement company, not a tech company.

What about Microsoft? Could they compete in this arena? Fundamentally, yes. In fact, I think Microsoft is in a great position to re-purpose some if its OS assets in combination with Internet Explorer and put that into a scale-down version, perhaps with some rich-client capabilities (and Silverlight pre-installed). In short: Microsoft would be great to put out a very competitive offering that is much superior to whatever Google and (hypothetically) Apple could put out. Whether that will happen is a completely different story however. After all MS’ track record in the mobile device arena is plastered with unrealized potential…