Whit AndrewsAs the lead analyst for Google at Gartner, it is my responsibility to watch over our coverage and understand how we examine this massively complex, massively ambitious software vendor. My colleague Ray Valdes is the sort of person one desperately looks to at a time like this. He has posted his opinion of Chrome OS on his blog. It’s my hope we’ll see more from him, and Gartner currently intends a First Take on this topic next week. The fact is that blog entries are easier to write than First Takes, and Ray’s opinion is very important. I am consequently extremely pleased that we have it. Nick Jones has added his take now — less technical and broad, and more admonitory and suaisive. I’ll look to mention my colleagues’ posts as they also come up. We have a special Google community meeting planned for the near future; some people are carving time out of vacations and such. If I can share insight from that, I will — or the participants will.
My background is in journalism, and my degree is in political science and literature. Consequently, I always wonder about the timings of announcements. (Did you notice that Sarah Palin dropped her bombshell last weekend going into a holiday weekend?) Google is apparently doing this now in part because the press started to scoop it (nice to see there’s life in the New York Times yet, youngsters). But the spin in the Times is that, among other things, Android wasn’t built for netbooks, and Google Chrome will be.
1. Google is announcing Chrome OS now because it wants to stop developers from using good-enough technology it has developed and instead to wait for better technology. A blog post on the Google blog is far more effective than any Big Campaign to call people on their little Google phones, or whatever the cognoscenti use now. (iPhones? Like I would know.) (See also, No More Big Launches, Please.)
Now, like any big decision, there have to be other factors. In this case, Google adores making mischief with Microsoft. And Microsoft plans soon to kick Windows 7 out of the nest and into the Big Bad World. Our research no doubt already details how that’s affecting PC sales (I can’t read everything, people) and Windows OS revenue, but at the very least, the Chrome OS announcement puts Microsoft in the position of needing to talk more about Gazelle, which Ray gets at a bit in his above-linked post. Even better for Google would be if Microsoft chose not to talk much about Gazelle, for fear of confusing the consumer market and delaying their interest in Windows 7 — which in turn would leave them mum on Gazelle and talking about 7 to keep cash flow clear, but make them look like fuddy-duddies.
2. Google is announcing Chrome OS now because it relishes the idea of derailing Windows 7 sales and forcing Microsoft to talk more about Gazelle.
I’ll think of more reasons, I bet, and so will you.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
5 responses so far ↓
1 Esteban Kolsky July 8, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Whit,
As excited as I am for this new development (I left a comment on Ray’s blog on why), I never stopped to think about the announcement now versus the future.
The way I see it, Google has enough credentials to announce something in the future and expectations are that they will deliver close to on time, near in features. So why now versus later?
I am going to go with a mix of your two reasons: they did not want to get scooped up (as it happened with Android), and they wanted to make MSFT’s week a bad one.
I also remember reading somewhere that Google had a bad day on Monday (Nokia is not developing and android-based phone, some court order came against them, they are being investigated for monopoly infractions on the the google books fiasco — or something like that) which you probably know more about. If that is the case – how about simply spreading some good news for a change?
I am just saying…
2 Ed Emmerson July 8, 2009 at 9:48 pm
This is the same company that just took the beta sticker off of Gmail 2 days ago, right? Maybe our little Google is growing up and enterprise adoption of its web apps will only come after a grown-up company builds a big boy OS. Android has the smart phone tag on it already and they can’t market a smart phone OS on steroids as a laptop OS.
Maybe the consumerization of IT is doing a 180 and this is an answer to the enterprise pushing back and saying if you want us to play with it, at least take the “Fisher Price” tag off of it.
3 Why Chrome OS Now | Chrome OS: Why now? Mischief and Communication July 9, 2009 at 8:15 am
[...] person one desperately looks to at a time like this. He has posted his opinion of Chrome OS [...] Read more Share and [...]
4 Why does anyone care about operating systems? July 9, 2009 at 5:21 pm
[...] that it is thinking about a new PC operating system built around the Chrome browser. I will let my colleagues debate what this really means. But this all makes me a little sad. I thought that obsessing about [...]
5 Our Unruly Chorus Rehearses: Gartner Mulls Google’s Chrome OS July 9, 2009 at 10:45 pm
[...] ← Chrome OS: Why now? Mischief and Communication [...]