A Microsoft VP’s perspective on Google Chrome OS
Abu-Hadba, Microsoft Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism gave an interview to Venturebeat at the occasion of the launch of Silverlight 3.
He gave some of his insights about Chrome, while praising the competition, he also mentioned about why Google is trying to muscle into the operating system business. And no, he said, it’s not because Google wants to make computing simpler and faster nor is it part of a grand plan to undo Microsoft’s dominance.
“Most of what Google does is defensive,” Abu-Hadba said. “Google is trying to distract competitors from attacking its cash cow, search. He argued that whenever Google enters a new market, like releasing mobile operating system Android, it’s trying to force competitors to focus on existing products, rather than challenging Google in search. And the company may actually feel threatened for the first time in years, since Microsoft recently made a splash with its revamped “decision engine” Bing, and traffic appears to be growing”…
His statement makes sense to me, now I am thinking, how many products at Google that really make money to the company beside its search and the advertisement business that comes along with it.
[Source Venturebeat]
Hmmm, sorry I can’t see that right now. I am trying to think of how that could correct, yet the theory has gaps. Ok lets try to put his statement into something workable. Google does search and ads and makes money. Competition would be other search engines and advertisment companies. Google works on Android to (in theory) make search competition focus on current products instead of attacking their search engine. Think about it.. the only people who would be attacking that would possibly be distracted would be Microsoft correct? I mean I don’t see Yahoo or Ask trying to work on a mobile OS because they were distracted. I am trying really hard to think of something Google has done that has been defensive. They enter new markets to make money. Maybe not in the way that is obvoius to some people. Android, Chrome, Chrome OS even Google Voice for example, are not meant to be the “cash cows.” They are meant to be the grass that feeds the cows. Everyone has heard of Google, like it or not, the name isn’t going away. Heck, the name has become synonymous with search! “Hey I Googled Google Voice over Google Talk to find out how to set it up” Everything they do eventually ties into gathering information to increase their advertising business. So YES they want to make computing simpler and YES they want to make computing faster. Because if you can get a computer on the Internet simpler and faster, you will more likely hope online to “Google” something when you need to answer a question. You will leave a trail of hyperlinks using your Android phone, you will openly show Google the most clicked topics on your website using Google Analytics, and you will freely rate websites when you visit them using Google Chrome and Chrome OS. Google is far from feeling threatened, they are simply making sure that all roads point to dollar signs, and will make sure that YOU get on the Internet as quickly and painlessly as possible to continue traveling those roads. (But, this is just one persons humble opinion.
I simply agree with you. Looking further, all things they do are serving to their core business. Not many people can see that coherency.