Google and Microsoft have long competed for talent and the attention of Wall Street, but the two have never taken each other head on. Google’s main business is search. Microsoft’s is Windows and Office software.
This year, Google signaled it is ready to take Microsoft on on its home turf with an operating system called Chrome OS. Microsoft is like Starbucks when McDonald’s started selling espresso.
Built for netbooks, Chrome OS is a free operating system designed to take users to a Web browser. It promises to turn a computer into a Web-only machine, much like a television that shows only video.
“We’re dealing with legacy systems when all people need is the Web,” said Caesar Sengupta, product manager director for Chrome OS at Google.
So Google is betting Chrome OS will ride the explosion in cloud computing — where software will be stored on the Internet instead of on a computer.
While observers see Web-based cloud computing as the way of the future, however, some question whether Chrome OS has come too soon.
“I do think it’s the future. I just don’t think it’s the near-term future,” said analyst Rob Enderle of The Enderle Group, a consultancy in San Jose, Calif.
Microsoft declined to talk about Chrome OS in interviews. The company put out a statement reiterating how Windows 7 sells twice as many copies as other operating systems.
“From what was shared (about Chrome OS), it appears to be in the early stages of development. From our perspective, however, our customers are already voicing their approval of the way Windows 7 just works — across the Web and on the desktop, and on all sizes and types of PCs,” the statement said.
No computer-makers have announced plans to sell computers with Chrome OS yet, but Google is planning on netbooks with Chrome OS to start selling…