Bill Gates - Google OS Looks A Lot Like Linux
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Bill Gates has stepped up to the plate and took a swing at the newly announced Google Chrome operating system saying it looks like Linux. Mr. Gates did say the Google hasn’t really said much about the new OS so it is hard to really comment on it. In fact the less Google says the more interesting it becomes. The former head of Microsoft also stated in an article the following information:
As for the notion that the browser needs to act more like an OS, he noted that the browser has already become an extremely broad concept, with all of the plug-ins and other things that are now done inside a browser.
“It just shows the word browser has become a truly meaningless word,” Gates said. “What’s a browser? What’s not a browser? If you’re playing a movie, is that a browser or not a browser? If you’re doing annotations, is that a browser? If you’re editing text, is that a browser or not a browser? In large part, it’s more an abuse of terminology than a real change.”
Steve Ballmer, the current head of the Redmond software giant, has his own thoughts:
“We don’t need a new operating system,” Ballmer said Tuesday, as part of his keynote at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. “What we do need to do is to continue to evolve Windows, Windows Applications, IE (Internet Explorer), the way IE works in totality with Windows and how we build applications like Office…and we need to make sure we can bring our customers and partners with us.”
No one expects Microsoft to be happy about the Google announcement, though it wasn’t exactly a surprise. Rumors have been flying for several years that Google was in fact developing such a system. But as I have stated before, I believe that Windows and Chrome are going to be apples and oranges.
If the Google Chrome OS doesn’t live up to expectations, it also will go the way of other Linux distributions that have little appeal to the masses. Chrome needs to boot fast and get the user on the Internet quickly. Chrome should also include a variety of different browsers to allow the user some choice in what they use. It will also need to support a large number of printers and other hardware. It should be interesting to see how Google overcomes these problems.
Opinions please.
8 Comments
James Hill
July 15th, 2009
at 5:01pm
I will check out the source in a second. Nice post btw.
Yeah, I think Google has a lot riding on the line here. I have never seen a linux OS so hyped up before and I think Bill Gates is worried that Google might steal the netbook OS market from him, that is if the Chrome OS is successful.
I will be downloading my copy, will you give it a try?
Ron Schenone
July 15th, 2009
at 5:15pm
Hello Janes,
I will be giving it a try as soon as it is released.
Dean
July 15th, 2009
at 6:17pm
I had to laugh when reading “We don’t need another OS”. What an arrogant dork… yet again.
Kitty
July 16th, 2009
at 1:03am
Honestly, I’d like to see what google comes up with, but I’m not confident in their ability to pull it off. Google has a serious issue making great applications that have a bunch of little issues that add up to some serious ones. Even chrome is a pile of bugs, and doesn’t implement something as simple as XMLHttpRequest properly.
Gates does have a point though; the term browser has become meaningless, they’ve evolved so far beyond what that word can adequately describe, it’s become an impossibly insufficient description.
I wonder why Gazelle wasn’t mentioned anywhere in this, the ‘browser kernel’ concept seems to be significantly in the same vein as Chrome OS. I guess we’ll see in the long run, with any luck, google will learn how to finish what they start.
Bill Gates - Google OS Looks A Lot Like Linux - Linux Blog
July 16th, 2009
at 2:14am
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Bill Webb
July 16th, 2009
at 10:59am
The big difference between Chrome and any other Linux distro (if we can indeed call it that) will be that for the first time one has a major player who’s putting major juice behind it — a situation well overdue.
I can’t imagine why Bill wouldn’t be knocking it. Google is a whole ‘nother smoke, compared to a bunch of folks working for free and trying to support their servers by selling CDs.
As far as GOOG’s track record with all their bugs is concerned, as mentioned in the previous post: early on, with Gmail, Google adopted the position of throwing a beta out for a loooong test, and fixing things that came up. People seem to forget that Gmail and Google Apps (to name just two) weren’t put into full release until this month. The fact that some millions of users chose to go ahead and use them anyway does not bear on the fact that they were BETA. Now is the point where we need to begin judging their ability to turn out a finished product.
Silly them. They conned us all into doing their testing, and dropped a few projects that weren’t working out well. Gee, how dumb.
If Micro$oft had adopted the same stupid tactics, they might not have to worry so much about the competition. There might not BE any competition.
Battle Tank-3808-radio-controlled - Big Bozz
July 16th, 2009
at 9:57pm
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Alex Pankiewicz
July 22nd, 2009
at 8:39pm
No shit it looks like linux, google os is built off of linux!