Google’s Chrome: A Different Flavor of World Domination

Google’s Chrome is bringing all sorts of issues out into the open, beyond is it just a replacement browser. 

During a conversation with friends, I was struck once again by the dissimilar similarities of how Google and Microsoft are approaching their missions to dominate the world.

See what you think about the different taste of each flavor these strategies/tactics of “world domination”.

Strategy 1: Release before it’s done

           Microsoft:  Calls it 1.0 and charges for it.

           Google:  Calls it “beta” and gives it away.

 

Strategy 2: Has an alternative source of revenues it can use to fund efforts to

beat the competition

            Microsoft: Revenues from its OS develops apps used to crush competition

            Google: Revenues from ads creates “free software” which kills competition

 

Strategy 3: Announces future plans to “prepare the market”

            Microsoft: Announces specs of new standards and vaporware, effectively freezing the market while they wait for MS to finish.

            Google: Releases early software for free, effectively freezing the market while everyone figures out what to do.

 

Strategy 4: Release an “operating environment” to sit on top of the operating system

           Microsoft: Windows 1.0

           Google: Chrome

 

Strategy 5: Dominate the worldwide market

           Microsoft: See antitrust lawsuits for their approach to this.

           Google: Free value to general population, but “Oops that clause about ‘we will own your stuff’ in the Chrome EULA was a typo…”

 

While both are going for world domination, as a consumer, Google’s flavor of world domination just tastes better and maybe that’s the key to their success.

Chrome = Leading Edge Indicator for Desktop Decline

The decline of the desktop is coming. Microsoft knows it and created Silverlight. Adobe saw it and created Air. Google saw it and created Chrome. 

Save for Chrome, most people haven’t heard of the other efforts to create a fast stable and more powerful operating environment for sophisticated “software as service” or “cloud hosted” applications people can access from their desktop. 

Thomas Claburn has an interesting take on this at InformationWeek. Check out his article here.

Chrome rallies the “Army of the Dead” into battle

Huh?

I was reading a story by Matt Asay on CNET about how Chrome is ‘Google’s new Trojan Horse’.

He gets it. I posted a comment to his story that I thought was worth sharing here.

As I mentioned, geeks get where Chrome is going.

Everyone else is left scratching their heads and saying “What’s so cool about Chrome?” or “IE works fine, why do I need another browser?”.

Having seen the rise of Microsoft and their victory over Netscape, this Microsoft vs Google war is going to be VERY entertaining as it plays out.

Google’s revenue stream comes from ads. Microsoft’s comes from software.

Who better to harness the army of “software should be free” open source developers than the company who doesn’t depend on revenues from software?

Reminds me of “Lord of the Rings” where Aragorn raising the “Army of the Dead” for the battle of Minas Tirith…who could have guessed you could get THOSE guys to show up and join the battle against evil?????

Of course, I’ll end the analogy there without going so far as to call say that Microsoft are the forces of evil like Sauron and his crew.

They’ve actually done some great things for the world of software and computers…and Bill is doing great work for the world now.

Matt Asay’s full article is here.

PS – Thank you New Line Cinema for making a great set of films. The image above resides on their site “www.lordoftherings.net”.

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