

Cringely: Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/opinion/13cringely.html

======
hillel
This analysis is sorely lacking perspective. I could pick on a bunch of things
but I'll just choose one to make my point.

Cringely's assertion that Google should fear making Google search not work on
Windows PCs is ludicrous. Period. Anyone who seriously thinks any broadly
successful (public) company would pull a stunt like that and piss off the vast
bulk of their users has lost touch with reality.

~~~
kalid
Not even the PR implications, but just the security/technical. How does an OS
vendor block access to a website? Deny it in the hosts file? Add a default
firewall rule? Code a special case in IE?

Any such incident would cause irrevocable damage with any
government/enterprise and push them to abandon the platform entirely. As you
say, it's just absurd.

~~~
jojhbugbt
Like a computer where you can only buy apps from a single site owned by the
maker and only connect to the net through a single service provider - no
consumer would ever go for that.

~~~
pgebhard
That's a bit of an overly obscured reference to Apple.

------
donaq
_The vast majority of Google searches are, of course, done on PCs running
Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It is not in Google’s real interest
to displace these products, which have facilitated so much of its success._

I call bullshit. This suggests that if Windows and Internet Explorer were
replaced by some other browser or OS, then people would search less on Google,
which is ridiculous. As long as the number of people using the replacement
products remain the same, the number of searches performed on Google should
remain the same, all else remaining equal. It's not like Google searches run
especially fast on Windows and IE.

------
andreyf
_And don't forget Apple, which with the iPod and iPhone has shown an ability
to revolutionize markets other companies saw as mature._

Did people really think MP3 players and phones were anywhere near "mature"
before Apple's products? I remember getting my girlfriend a pre-iPod MP3
player back around 2002... she never figured out how to put her music on
there, and ended up getting an iPod as soon as she started buying music via
iTunes.

~~~
nostrademons
The smart phone market is pretty far from "mature" right now.

I'd say it probably just crossed the chasm with the iPhone, and the bulk of
the mainstream has yet to be converted.

------
symesc
Uh, Bob, what happened?

Executives at Google and Microsoft are delivering solutions to "remind" each
other that they exist?

I'm going to go back to some of your older blog posts to remind myself that
you can add something to the conversation.

------
andreyf
Hm, a lot of opinions here, ranging in insight. This one was the most
perceptive, in my opinion:

 _It’s not as if these companies are gearing up to produce automobiles. The
engineering teams for any of these products are, at most, 20 to 30 people —
immaterial for Microsoft, which has 90,000 or so employees, and Google, which
has 20,000. Nor are all of Google’s products even guaranteed to ship, being as
they are in that semi-solid technical state called beta test and subject to
cancellation on a whim._

~~~
TomOfTTB
The problem with this statement is that Cringely has no way of knowing this
and the facts publicly available contradict his account.

Just to give one example look at Steve Ballmer and Bing. Unless he's flat out
lying he's going to spend 5% to 10% of Microsoft's operating income on Bing
(<http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/171648.asp>). That's not
exactly immaterial as Cringely claims.

~~~
aboodman
According to Ohloh, there are 199 committers to Chromium:

<http://www.ohloh.net/p/chrome/contributors?page=1>

A few of them probably don't work for Google, some are duplicates, but still
nowhere near 20-30 people.

~~~
andreyf
Wow, that's an order of magnitude more than I expected... now I'm really
curious how many full-time engineers Google pays to develop Chrome.

------
rfreytag
I have found Cringely to be usually essentially correct even if he is wrong on
details. You just have to know which details are important and which are not.
The strategic importance of Windows to Google and for Microsoft of not again
getting the attention of the Justice Department by anti-competitively
squeezing Google functionality on Windows (now that Bush is out of office) is
absolutely correct.

Microsoft is clearly going to provide Google enough competition that they
cannot roam too far into Microsoft's profit center. And Google is absolutely
focused on Search using OSes to press the market (including Microsoft) in
directions that Google needs to maintain its position and grow it.

Cringely is absolutely correct on the points that matter here. Contrary
arguments centered on staffing sizes and such are I think probably correct but
missing the point.

------
edw519
Yesterday's Office Depot flyer had 12 laptops and 1 desktop, exactly the
reverse of 3 years ago. Who knows, in 3 years it may have 12 handhelds and 1
laptop.

One thing's for sure. If your software has problems running on smaller and
smaller hardware, you're doomed. Just ask DEC, Wang, Qantel, Basic4, Data
General, etc.

With Chrome, Google is attacking Microsoft's Achilles heel. If Microsoft's
response is another Vista, it should be interesting.

