Window's weakness is google's advantage

San Francisco
The Economic Times
If at times you’re frustrated with your PC – and who isn’t? – Google says it is working on a solution.

Many people easily lose patience with PCs that are slow to start up and prone to crashing, vulnerable to virus attacks and constantly in need of fiddly updates. Hoping to turn that irritation to its advantage, Google is developing an operating system – the underlying software that handles the most basic functions of a computer.

With the software, Google is mounting a blunt challenge to the dominance of Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs about 95 percent of PCs. Google promises that its Chrome operating system, which will be available on computers in the second half of next year, will put an emphasis on speed, simplicity and security.

Google faces enormous hurdles. Computing giants like IBM and Sun Microsystems have spent years trying to dethrone Microsoft, with little to show for it.

But if it gains traction, Google’s plan could undermine not only Windows but also Microsoft’s other multibillion-dollar franchise, Office. Google is trying to put the Web browser at the center of people’s digital lives, relegating complicated operating systems like Windows to a secondary role.

“I’m not saying the shareholders should take their money and run, but this is the beginning of the end of Microsoft as we knew it,” said Jean-Louis Gassee, a venture capitalist who has battled Microsoft in posts at Apple and his own computer company, Be.

A spokesman for Microsoft, Frank Shaw, declined to comment on Google’s announcement or the competitive threat.

The new software’s primary mission will be to run Google’s Chrome browser, which will serve as a quick on-ramp to Web sites and online applications like Gmail and Facebook