Re:Google Plans to Introduce a PC Operating System (for netb...
by edw519 on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @09:43AM
(#693859)
"Round 2: the game has changed,"
I guess spending 10 years building infrastructure to support web apps had to happen first.
Re:Google Plans to Introduce a PC Operating System (for netb...
by 10ren on Wednesday July 08, 2009 @10:56PM
(#695129)
What are you thinking of as infrastructure? I suppose broadband is more widely available now (10 years ago I was on dialup at home, now my max is over 2MB/sec); PC hardware has become fast enough for Javascript/Flash/Java (and much improvement on their software implementation performance).
From the developer point of view, AJAX-style dynamic webapps have become easier, with browser-support, dev tools, and a trained workforce; ditto for the server (esp. ruby on rails, but it's across the language-board, and DB, OR mapping, XML, JSON); and cheaper servers (which are also much more powerful). OK, OK! You've convinced me.
Their aim seems to be instant web-access, which benefits google. Linux compatibility would seem secondary - and perhaps even deliberately omitted, as Google wants you to use web-apps, not desktop-apps. And if Google Chrome is fast enough, and offline operation is seamless enough, that might not be a problem at all.
This is the thing that Microsoft feared from Netscape and Java. It got away that time. Round 2: the game has changed, but the outcome, even if preordained, remains as yet unknown.