Bing. Chrome. OS. Who cares!

I used Google Chrome for a couple of months, until it crashed one day a few months ago and simply would not revive. Even re-installing a couple of times made no difference. There was no point using IE because of the time it took to even open the program. So, for now it is Firefox. I am so ready for a next generation of web browsers. I can't quite figure out what that might look like, but it cannot be minor variations of what we have.

After my experience with Chrome, I have pretty much given up on taking any Google product for a test drive--I use enough Google services already (blogger, YouTube, reader, groups.) I wasn't jumping up and down about Google's new operating system because none of these tinkerings excite me that much. But I just could not think about the common thread among all these to explain my ennui. Until I read Robert Cringely, who, with this op-ed, shows why he has a wonderful understanding of the big picture:

none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers. It’s just noise — a form of mutually assured destruction intended to keep each company in check.

Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Nearly everything else it makes loses money, sometimes deliberately. Google makes most of its money from selling Internet ads next to search results. Nearly everything else it does loses money, too.

Neither company really cares because both make so much from their core products that it simply doesn’t matter. But companies, like people, strive and dream and in this case both dream, at least sometimes, of destroying the other. Only they can’t — or won’t — do it in the end, because it is against the interests of either company to do so.

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. Chrome products are given away, so they bring in no revenue for Google, and they don’t even provide a better search or advertising experience for their users, the company admits. So why does Google even bother?

To keep Microsoft on its toes.

I wonder who that next company will be--the real big one--that will dethrone Microsoft and Google and Apple. I can't wait, not because I want these corporations to fail, but because it will launch a whole new world :-)
Cringely writes:

I wish these companies had more guts, that either would make a true bet-the-company investment in changing the world, but they won’t. Google engineers are allowed to spend 20 percent of their time on new ideas — yet of those thousands of ideas, the company can really invest in only a dozen per year, leading to dissatisfaction and defections as the best nerds leave to pursue their dreams.

Maybe they’ll leave for the startup that finally topples Microsoft ... or Google. But until then these companies will posture, spend a little money on research and development, and keep each other in check, while reporters and publications pretend that it matters.