Wabewalker

location: San Jose, CA

mood: apathetic

I’m annoyed but not surprised about the multiple geekgasms bubbling through the digerati about Google’s pre-pre-announcement of their new operating system, Chrome OS. As I’ve said before, there is nothing a blogger likes more than a tech company catfight, and pitting Microsoft against Google is a classic.

Still, I’m betting on Microsoft to win this in the long run. Not because I think Google don’t have the technical skill; they do, of course. What they lack is the technical vision to pull it off. The whole premise of Chrome OS is that there is enough functionality on the ol’ Interweb to eliminate the need for local applications. Yeah, right: ask Steve Jobs how well “web apps are a sweet solution” worked out for iPhone 1.0.

Hell, I’d be willing to bet that Chrome will never see the light of day outside of the Googleplex. The powers that be will quietly knife the baby rather than release something that will be a mockery of usability. Just using gOS — supposedly based on Google’s own internal distro — is painful: all the glitz of the Macintosh experience without the ease of use. (The idea of “Spray-on Usability” runs rampant throughout it.) In the second half of 2010, a few blogs will post “Whatever happened to Chrome OS?” but that will be it.

Google’s up to something, all right; but radically redefining the idea of an operating system is not it. Maybe they’re trying to kill the netbook market with something that will leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.