Google just officially confirmed that it is releasing a new open-source web browser,named Google Chrome . My immediate reaction is to see Google also launch a mobile browser that can be deployed to multiple OS platforms. This may influence adoption/potential cross-over to the Android mobile platform. Sandboxed Tabs would be a key thing to watch.They are also moving to multiple processes. Seriously, waiting to try as soon as this gets released.
As I pointed out years back, Google is using the internet to systematically devalue Microsoft’s assets, forcing a “Microsoft’s Black Monday” on the wall street in future. Google is leveraging the mantra that built Microsoft: who controls the UI controls the user; who controls the API controls the programmer.
While there may be scepticism about what could a new broswer do - except introducemore confusion, as I see it, if Google Chrome delivers on its promise of speed, stability, security and reliability, it will like gmail soon commiand the mind share of the web users. This in turn should make it possible to push common web standards! The advantages of their fundamental design changes will likely force other browser makers to reexamine and bring out similar or better appraoches to the market . On the privacy front,the google chrome ecosystem should bring in the right plug-ins to allay any concern there. This will definitely shake up the IE/Windows behemoth .
As cloud computing, becomes more mainstream, users will begin to spend more time online - and a presence in the entire internet food chain is going to help Google.While Google's products are not a replacement OS, but the collection of tools released thus far serve the same purpose. Even products that run on Windows PCs, such as Google's Picasa photo-editing software, could tie back to Google's online services. Google is intelligently rebatching Microsoft desktop products/services as its. Web companies, such as eBay, Yahoo and Amazon.com, treat their Web sites as customizable platforms, & offers a starkly different technology vision to developers than traditional software companies do.It is slowly leading to a situation where one model says build for Windows and the Microsoft 'stack'; the other says build for the Internet. The platform of the future shall not be focussed on controlling the hardware but it is going to be around access, community, collaboration & content. Clearly , this is an exciting announcement that will benefit competition, innovation, enforcing standards, web developers and the horde of web users.
Update : Google quickly repointed the Google Browser launch page to its homepage!
There's a mistaken belief, held for a long time that open source can foster innovation. Keith Sawyer writes, the open source model almost never generates breakthrough innovation. He points out that when Krzysztof Klincewicz, a management professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, analyzed the 500 top open source projects on SourceForge.net, he found that only 5 of the 500 - one percent - were examples of radical innovation.
Part of the attraction towards open source is that the old model of innovation was strong central management, hierarchical reporting lines, and a linear staged process from the R&D lab through to the production floor. His submission is that the open source model turns this on its head; no central control, and a distributed and diffused network of experts. The key to breakthrough innovation is to find the right balance between these two opposed models
I am fond of the statement by Larry McVoy, a close ally in the past to Linus Torvalds, creator of the open source Linux operating system, also an industry veteran who has developed operating system software at Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics.
- Open source as a business model, in isolation,is pretty much unsustainable.You have to have a business model that will let you recoup those costs. These arguments are exceedingly unpopular. Everyone wants everything to be free. No one can show how to build a software-development house and fund it off open source revenue. It can not be done !
- The open source guys can scrape together enough resources to reverse engineer stuff. That's easy. It's way cheaper to reverse engineer something than to create something new. But if the world goes to 100% open source, innovation goes to zero.
His view on where innovation would come from : source companies will make commodity knockoffs and eke out tiny profits, while traditional "closed source" companies will develop innovative products and earn fatter profits.
In my view, open source has a long way to go to become really core inside enterprises. Open-source products are a good solution in some circumstances. In the enterprise space, open-source offerings have limited revenue or installed base they are not a significant factor in the market, except in pockets of infrastructure space. Most organizations shy away from production deployment of pure open-source technology above the infrastructure stack without fool proof and proven models of product/maintenance/service needed for production deployment. As Michael Hickins shows, open-source community needs to get over its overweening sense of superiority and messianic inevitability, change gears and try things diferently. Its a long long battle ahead for open source movement to get stronger to be considered a candidate for fostering sustainable innovation
Microsoft & Open Source movement are traditional antagonists. Just as we thought that Microsoft was extending an olive tree to the open source movement, here comes the news that is upping its ante against the open source movement. Microsoft asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google, Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.
Microsoft deserves to get fair and reasonable returns on the investments that it made to develop its patent basket. The anti-microsoft sentiment is running dangerously high.While raising all this noise, Microsoft seems to be looking at collecting royalties, like the way it pays Novell, and perhaps not sue an entire agitated open source community and its users. After all OIN itself has powerful backers.
Sometimes buyer power and influence can dictate the course of such moves but lager enterprise and open source adoption look still sticky. Interestingly, in the enterprise space, large consulting & system integrators are taking a cautious approach towards supporting open source software, in order not to upset theirsizeable and profitable revenue stream from implementing and supporting proprietary software. While the realization is there to be more engaged in open source, fact of the matter is that they don't know exactly how, nor do they understand the impact on their business model. The problem, it appears to me is in the process of patent granting itself.While covering Microsoft's recent frenzy of patents acquisition, I wrote that, it may be time to abolish software patents. Microsoft had filed very high number of patent applications in the US in the last few years - the pace of filing made news: 60 fresh, non obvious patentable ideas every week. Reason for sudden increase in applications - Microsoft found that others file about two patents for every $1 million spent on research and development. Microsoft had not taken an interest in patents in its early years because, as it thought it could rely on copyright. Microsoft says that the courts changed the rules, and Microsoft had to respond like everyone else. Eliminating software patents would give Microsoft another chance to repair its relationship with open-source users. Microsoft has repeatedly pointed out to "intellectual property risk" that corporate customers should take into account when comparing software vendors. This has now led to an interesting situation :On the one side, Microsoft has an overflowing war chest and bulging patent portfolio, ready to fight - or cross-license with - any plaintiff who accuses it of patent infringement. On the other are the open-source developers, without war chest, without patents of their own to use as bargaining chips and without the financial means to indemnify their customer.
I think far reaching changes need to be done in the space of patenting and till such time Microsoft and others are better off by talking and working out reasonable arrangements. Litigations would complicate things further.
Sadagopan's Weblog on Emerging Technologies, Trends,Thoughts, Ideas & Cyberworld "All views expressed are my personal views are not related in any way to my employer"
