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My colleague Michael Hickins and I have been going back and forth on this blog about Chrome OS. His last post about that followed the Google line about just whom Google had lined up, including HP, Lenovo, Asustek and others. But as Dan Nystedt at Computerworld noted today, if you talk to the PC vendors, many sound far less committed than the impression Google's blog entry gives.
Back in June, my colleague Michael Hickins called augmented reality the "killer app" of the cell phone and mentioned two companies, Layar and Mobilizy. There's just one problem. An Apple patent getting press this week could mean that such vendors might have to get permission to do what they do, because, if granted, it would seem to give Apple a lock on augmented reality on a portable device.
You can come down on one side or the other of how practically big the planned Chrome OS will be. My take is skeptical, and as often happens, my colleague Michael Hickins disagrees. But getting stuck on the yes/no question misses what I think is a more interesting possibility: a Firefox-based OS.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt admits that he might have to recuse himself from Apple's board, now that Google is introducing the Chrome operating system. Schmidt told reporters at Sun Valley, Idaho, where he's attending a technology conference, that he intends to discuss his board position "with the Apple...
Executives at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.-owned papers allowed reporters to hack into phone conversations of celebrities, including Gwenyth Paltrow, and then paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover it up, according to a report in The Guardian. One of those executives is now the chief communic...
Of late there's been far more government scrutiny of Google than any corporate executive wants for his or her company. Part of that has been the FTC looking at the boards of Google and Apple and how they are unusually closely interlocked, sharing, as they do, two directors. The big concern is whether Google and Apple are competitors and if an overly cozy relationship could be harmful to the market. With the former's announcement of planning an operating system using its Chrome browser on top of a Linux base, the two companies go head-to-head, and the government scrutiny will likely only intensify. But don't expect Google to back down, because it is playing what has become its familiar gambit: do what you want until someone twists your arm enough to stop you.
If there was any doubt, as my colleague Erik Sherman expressed yesterday, that Google actually has any hardware partners lined up to use Chrome, its shiny forthcoming operating system, Google has put those doubts to rest. Partners so far include some of the biggest names in portable computing: He...
The worldwide runaway success of Apple's iPhone is explained quite simply by the apps available for users to download. Apple has an unmatched catalog of apps and enjoys the benefit (and unparalleled competitive advantage) of the iTunes payment system, which is as frictionless as mobile payment syste...
The battle has been raging for over a month as EMC and NetApps contended for Data Domain -- ironic, as the prize was a company whose products actually reduced the need for the hardware that the two competitors sell for a living. Now EMC has walked away with the prize, though it seems that the real payoff would have to be in the negative sense of denying a strategic asset to a competitor.
Yesterday, Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $299. It's undoubtedly intended to drive increased volume. But the really interesting story is how margins on the device allow Amazon to sell e-books below cost and convert enough customers that it can make itself the de facto sole outlet for books and virtually own the publishing industry.
There's now something called the Google stack: it starts with an operating system called Chrome, a browser of the same name, the forthcoming Wave productivity, communications and collaboration application, a separate set of Google Apps (which includes secure email and chat), and a burgeo...
Today, Cisco announced that Ned Hooper would become its chief strategy officer, "developing Cisco's business strategy and identifying market transitions," according to the press release. That raises the question of where Cisco may be going.
Google's new Chrome operating system is going to clean up the netbook market within five years (or as soon as HP and other vendors get out from under their OEM deals with Microsoft), leaving Microsoft with an increasingly marginalized desktop PC market for its Windows operating system. Google says i...
With Google's announcement of a Chrome-based PC operating system, you could almost hear the cheers from pundits hot for something to gnash for months, people who hate Microsoft, and the Google true-believers. It's an announcement that goes hand-in-hand with the word that the beta tag is now dropped from Google Apps. However, those who think that Microsoft's days are numbered in the short-run should realize that in a way, Google is about to become Microsoft, trying to move from position of strength to challenge a powerful incumbent, as have many others. That's a task much harder than it even sounds, particularly when you don't have an internal unified front.
The official word is that Google has dropped the beta tag from Google Apps. Combined with the announcement of a Chrome-based operating system coming out next year, and you can see that the company has tossed a gauntlet northward toward Redmond. However, there's a lot more to being ready for enterprise customers, and market share, than dropping a word off a web page. After all, what's in a name? A whole lot, actually.
