__/ [Guy Macon] on Thursday 22 September 2005 14:00 \__
> (Please don't trim the newsgroups line or set followups;
> I am the moderator of misc.business.product-dev and I want
> to put all of my buddies at alt.internet.search-engines on
> my whitelist. Thanks!)
>
> Let's start with a few known facts and then speculate from there...
>
> Fact:
> Google hired Marc Lucovsky from Microsoft. Lucovsky is one of
> Microsoft's key Windows architects - one of the dozen engineers
> that came from DEC to Microsoft to build the Windows NT operating
> system. He designed the NT kernel, executive and Win32 subsystems
> and later was the chief software architect for Microsoft's
> ill-fated .Net Hailstorm project.
>
> Fact:
> Google hired Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft. Lee headed up the Natural
> Interactive Services Division at Microsoft, responsible for the
> development of technologies and services for making the user
> interface of Microsoft's operating systems easier to use.
>
> Fact:
> Microsoft has long followed an "extend and embrace" strategy.
> They want the web to be filled with "works best on Internet
> Explorer!" sites. They want applications written in Microsoft
> Visual C++. not ANSI C++. They want documents to be in Word
> format so they work best with Microsoft Office. They want email
> to run on Exchange Server, not Sendmail. They want wen pages to
> be hosted on IIS, not Apache. In short, they want you to have to
> buy their OS to send emails, surf the web, or sens a memo to your
> boss.
>
> Fact:
> Google has been toying with the ides of running their software on
> your PC instead of on the web, extending the functionality of he
> Google Toolbar.
>
> Fact:
> Google has been raising billions of dollars, and nobody is exactly sure
> what they are going to do with that money.
>
> Fact:
> Google is a "killer application." Just as Lotus-123 drove sales of
> the original IBM PC, Google searching drives that sales of PCs and
> OSs today. If <cough> someone develops an OS that works better with
> Google and still runs MS apps, that OS could be a windows killer.
>
> Speculation:
> Google is planning on developing Googleplex Star Thinker: The Google
> Operating System System (I made the name up; maybe they will become
> boring and call it GOS or GoogleOS...). It will run MS Apps better
> than Windows will. It will embrace the Web 2.0 paradigm. It will
> follow standards rather than breaking them. And the Google search
> engine will continue to run just fine on Windows, but it will run
> better and do more things if you run it on GST.
It has been the speculation of many that Google will sooner or later attempt
to deploy an operating system. Given their shift from search to Web mail
and now (well, officially 2 days ago) wireless connections in the States,
the company appears highly unpredictable.
Some have argued that Google's love and care for Open Source would lead to
fork/extension of GNU/Linux, led by a multi-billion company with many
publicity 'pipes'.
Novell seem to have done rather well with their money and investors (SuSE),
RedHat are growing strong (funding from many sources including $100 million
from Michael Dell) and likewise Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu).
We shall wait and see. I, for once, welcome the 'invasion'. All our bases
are belong to Google [sic]. One wonders, however, if the unrest due to
Microsoft will be projected or inherited by Google. I sure hope they stick
to the GPL mantra, as well as the Google mantra.
Roy
[Note: resent as was sent to a moderated NG beforehand]
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