Found it very interesting this week that Google is now looking at getting into the operating system market, albeit for netbooks only at this stage.
A couple of issues piqued my interest. It’s great that Google are going to provide competition for the Windows platform, which in its many guises has caused problems over the years. The latest version, Windows 7, has been hyped as the best to come, but we’ve heard that before. The Google OS will be open-source and probably free. Open source could be a problem in that too many people might have too much input, but the free aspect is certainly worth looking into. Unfortunately, free also means that to make money Google might have to use advertisements, or collect information on users and onsell it for marketing purposes. With between 70-90 percent of the operating system market (depending on whose figures you use), Microsoft will not take this lying down. They will shout out about their system having more to offer and patches and updates etc, but when something is free, people cannot help but come on board. Said to be available from next year, it be interesting to see how the company that has a virtual browser monopoly in Western countries can make a buck from the OS. It has been noted that it will only be a lightweight OS – in other words you can use it to surf the net, word processing and sending and getting email etc, so won’t have the functionality of Windows….yet. I look forward to see how it all pans out.