Google is not just trying to win in console gaming space here - it's trying to establish itself as the browser monopolist and it seems to be doing it without much subtlety.
Monopoly laws exist for a reason and hard experience and I'm of the opinion that a single large player having complete domination even if they also have technical superiority is something that probably should be broken up.
I think this can be read in two ways:
1. You're the only product, therefore you're the best (and the worst too, at the same time I guess). In which case I want to point out you can be a monopoly without controlling 100% of the market. There are usually always smaller competitors around— you just happen to have a share large enough or the assets necessary to control what happens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. De Beers, for example, was considered a monopoly when it controlled 90% of the world's diamond production.
2. You're the one that came on top in a market with other competitors. Therefore, you must be the best.
This is assuming the only way to eliminate players off the market is by being "better" than them, but that is sadly not the case. For example— in Mexico there's a monopoly over the telecommunications business, and part of the reason it happened and stayed that way was due to support from the federal government and political corruption. Microsoft has had monopolies over several software markets— not because they were "better", but because if a better product came to be, they'd either buy it or build one that was built-in to Windows. IE was pretty bad, in many ways worse than FF, but also came built-in.
Democracy and a free press in theory should act as a retarding measure but somehow that’s gone off the rails more (or I’m more aware of it than I used to be and it’s always been that way), social media and the internet has changed the landscape, We have a sitting president screaming fake news at news where they have incontrovertible proof..often his own words from previous speeches and interviews.
The world has gone haywire and at a time when globally we need more unity to address the issues facing us as a global society the very bastions of that global society are getting beaten with a stick.
I wonder what the world is going to look like 2050, I’ll be 70 if I’m still around.
I mean, this doesn't stop competitors, but it's quite the moat to climb.
Google uses open standards and business practices to appear like the good guys, but make no mistake they are abusing their market power.
I mean when will you see ads of Stadia on the Google homepage? What happens when you will search for Assasins Creed in future? Oh, look we have it right here at Google, no need to leave our ad platform.
I've got a school age stepson nothing there either.
It's only been in the last two or three years that the ecosystem around them has really matured enough that they can compete with Windows machines and iPads on anything other than price. With the way schools' budgets work, we've really only just passed the early adopter stage.
Most schools aren't buying fleets of Pixelbooks. They're buying chromebooks from companies like Acer and Asus which make devices that retail in the $200-400 range.
And right now from the outside it feels like there is a ramping internal politics going on with ChromeOS, Android, PWA, Flutter, Fuchsia, Kotlin, Dart teams, with upper management giving free reign and let the best win kind of stuff.
I really, really doubt that. I don't think you understand how ubiquitous Chromebooks are becoming to the education space. Last I heard, in the US, 60%+ of all school provided computers are Chromebooks. School SysAdmins love them because they're dirt cheap and can be provisioned quickly.
From Google's perspective it's great too. Between Google Classroom and the way chromebook device management works, students have to have a google account to be able to go to school. There's rules on what data can collect, but still, kids are forced into the Google ecosystem at a young age.
ChromeOS doesn't need the pixelbook to survive, it provides an enormous amount of value on its own.
> And right now from the outside it feels like there is a ramping internal politics going on with ChromeOS, Android, PWA, Flutter, Fuchsia, Kotlin, Dart teams
100% agree there. I've been hearing for the past 3 or 4 years that Android and ChromeOS were going to be merged and nothing has yet to come of it. It seems like even Google doesn't know what is going on there.
Being only king of US school system isn't something that holds long term in a product roadmap.
Dude... I'm sorry but you are so wrong. Like I said originally, I literally just left this industry after working in it for years.
US spends more money on education than pretty much any other nation, both per student and as a total dollar amount. The reason the numbers are so low world wide is because chromebooks in education are a relatively new concept. Everyone has been going after the big fish, which is the US.
Additionally, they way you need to handle student data in the US is fairly consistent across state lines, which means you don't need to customize your solution very much to be able to sell to all 60 million students. Once you go overseas, you'd need to sell across multiple country lines to be able to find a pool of students that big (unless you're targeting China, Russia, or India which all have their own issues).
If you don't believe me, here's a blog post from a few years ago where google literally say ChromeOS is here to stay and then they focus heavily on it's benefits to education. https://blog.google/products/chrome/chrome-os-is-here-to-sta...
Even if you want to ignore all of that, I don't think you realize how much of a PR nightmare it would be if Google just stopped supporting ChromeOS right now. Schools have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying into this ecosystem. For schools that buy at the district level, it's in the millions. Most schools/districts don't have the budget to just replace all their computers overnight. Shutting down ChromeOS would pretty much fuck all digital learning in a lot of school districts for years to come.
PS. I'm pretty sure iOS's adoption numbers US & worldwide (not in schools, just total consumer adoption) match up pretty closely with Chromebooks, so there goes your idea that only dominating the US market isn't a viable business strategy.
Furthermore, the source didn't exactly do a great job with their research. This is a direct quote:
>Pixelbook is a Chromebook, meaning it runs on Google's Chrome OS software and is only capable of using internet-based applications.
>>The entire reason this is happening is because Google has successfully captured what once was the holy grail of markets, education, and is doing things like this to keep people on chromebooks.
Care to share how this tidbit is true?
>>The most important thing to realize is that they are focusing on gamers as a trial, the people who are price sensitive and who have to move first off of Windows 7 since they can't pay for extended support even if they wanted it. They can then continue this into the workplace. This is a brilliant move by Google.
What gamers are still on Win7? Most are already on 10. Most legit gamers care about input lag, which a streaming service will never solve vs. having hardware wired to your monitor. Most legit gamers use a wired mouse for gods sake because of input lag introduced to wireless mice.
Care to share how this tidbit is true?
Sorry to use your words against you, but I'm not so certain. I'd like to see real statistics from a few sources. I agree that Windows 7 is surely phasing out, but anecdotally (which is where most conjecture like yours and mine come from), I know a number of people who specifically stayed on Windows 7 for two reasons: 1) Compatibility with games; and 2) No telemetry (or at least it's considerably minimal compared to Windows 10).
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
I expect the number of Windows 10 players to increase as DX 12 becomes a common requirement, but we're not quite there yet.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
I would say 60+% qualifies as most. On the other hand, ~25% is not negligible. So you both win ?
Care to share how this tidbit is true?
Lots of filthy casuals just care that they can game. If they can, somehow, why shouldn't they buy the Chromebook? Hell, if that's what they had in school, they might have grown up to like precisely the genres of games that are easy to design around the lag.
Most legit gamers care about input lag
The majority of people don't notice < 40ms round trip lag, though "legit gamers" often do notice. < 30ms, round trip lag, and few people outside of hardcore FPS players will notice. Get to < 20ms, and you get down to rounding error levels. Don't just ask me. (Hobbyist game dev.) Ask gamedevs and companies who have conducted testing.
40ms roundtrip lag for most of the world seems pretty achievable to me.
Pinging google.com [172.217.5.110] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 172.217.5.110: bytes=32 time=6ms TTL=50 Reply from 172.217.5.110: bytes=32 time=8ms TTL=50 Reply from 172.217.5.110: bytes=32 time=9ms TTL=50 Reply from 172.217.5.110: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=50
Ping statistics for google.com: Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 6ms, Maximum = 10ms, Average = 8ms
I'm on GDC public WiFi.
--- google.com ping statistics --- 12 packets transmitted, 12 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 74.750/75.566/76.724/0.587 ms
I'm on 1GBit Google Fibre in Orange County which should be as ideal an experience as could be expected. Now, considering there would be additional time on top of the pure ping, I image there would be 80-90ms of latency for me. No way lol.
Pretty sure both of us have a Google datacenter nearby, but could the result of your ping be due to a bad configuration on your router?
I could totally make RTS and other real-time games work with that.
The entire reason this is happening is because Google has successfully captured what once was the holy grail of markets, education, and is doing things like this to keep people on chromebooks.
ChromeOS could be as important than Android. Especially with the Windows 7 extended life support coming up, Google has less than 4 years to convince people to transfer to their platform instead of Windows 10. I know it seems heretical to imply that it will happen but I think this is a good example that Google considers it not only a real possibility but something that they might actually have a good chance of being able to pull off.
The most important thing to realize is that they are focusing on gamers as a trial, the people who are price sensitive and who have to move first off of Windows 7 since they can't pay for extended support even if they wanted it. They can then continue this into the workplace. This is a brilliant move by Google.