The number of network-effect reasons why an end user should care what OS he runs continues to diminish. This is bad for Microsoft, but good for Apple and everybody else. Microsoft attempted to sandbag the browser because it foresaw this endgame, and it knew that its business model is based on a precarious positive feedback loop consisting of Windows, Office, and a very large install base. This feedback loop is broken when one no longer needs Windows to run most available software, collaborate with others, or find supported hardware.

At first, Google's offerings look, as another poster said, like spaghetti flung at a wall in hope that some will stick. I think there's a more cohesive strategy behind it, and it's all about building a platform on top of Windows (and other operating systems) to cut off Microsoft's air supply. Google's cloud printing initiative is a perfect example of this -- if a site's back-end can generate printer-ready content and allow a user to print it locally from a netbook/tablet/phone/whatever, that takes away a major reason to keep a Windows desktop sitting around at home connected to a printer. A user can just buy a Wifi-enabled printer if he cares about dead-tree artifacts.

I'm working now on a GWT application. Why, other than for its own internal purposes, would Google invest so much in this tool? It allows a new generation of in-house corporate apps requiring fast user interaction (think call center) to be built for the browser instead of the obvious Windows-centric alternatives like Visual Basic. One less reason for a Fortune 500 company to deploy 10K Windows desktops. Perhaps a call center could be run on a bunch of ChromeOS appliances?

Look at the initiative to introduce Gb-to-the-home. Google certainly wins if Youtube becomes like a TV network, but the lack of bandwidth also requires users to use home servers to house their content locally. Although appliances for this are certainly becoming more common, many consumers likely use a Windows machine to serve up their content to their TVs.

If I had more time, I'd write about other stuff Google's doing and how I think it ties in to the "layer on top of the desktop" strategy. While a rising cloud/network tide will float all non-Microsoft boats, how does Google justify paying for all the water required? Is the ROI there to support such a subsidy?