Google did the most expected - announce an OS to compete with Microsoft. After all, if Microsoft announces Bing which reportedly scared Google, what else can Google do other than this? May be Google will launch a “internet” database soon stating current databases are created when internet was not there. 

Is Google forgetting its own philosophy? The #2 item in its philosophy states

“It’s best to do one thing really, really well.“

Not sure in what way competing with MS on OS is really the thing that Google wants to do. Definitely a big deviation from the thing it does best - search.

I have no doubt that Google OS will have some cool and amazing features like its other products and with all the brains Google has hired it may even be the best OS that we have seen till date - but my bigger question - is this OS really necessary? Does this really benefit the end  users? Is this re-inventing old stuff really necessary? Google did this re-invention earlier with GMail which was in beta for 4+ years. Did it change anything in the way we communicate other than providing one more email id to users and some more free disk space. Needless to say it added some cool UI features, but beyond that nothing much.

With Google OS, instead of having MS monopoly on just the OS, users now will have Google monopoly on data/information. Already Google provides easy access of “your” data to every one with ease. GMail anyway “peeks into” your email  to serve context sensitive ads. Now, with Google internet savvy OS, Google can track everything the end user does, potentially aim to store everything byte of information that a user has within Google servers.

In my view, Windows will anyway evolve to cater to the internet generation. Google just accelerated it by announcing the Google OS. 

Google should really concentrate on innovating something new and different instead of blindly competing with Microsoft. I am sure Google can do better.

Filed under: Technology