Google Gears with the Palm Foleo is the only way I see it as a replacement for OS + apps.
However with Tablet and Origami devices coming in and being very inexpensive, I think the OS + apps will win.
Upon the announcement of Google Gears, I underscored: Google: Tough love for Microsoft.
Why? Google “owns” the Web experience, but to “improve” it, Google must go through the Microsoft-owned desktop, as I analyzed in Google’s love hate relationship with the desktop.
Does it gall CEO Schmidt to have to “Microsoft-enable” Google products? OR, does he get personal satisfaction in “using” Microsoft to achieve his Microsoft domination end-game.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, even if Google Gears is eventually fully realized, Google will not by default own anything particular, at the particular expense of Microsoft.
Google Gears is not ready for prime time and there is no way to know when, or if, it ever will be, especially in terms of consumer use. In the meantime, no company in the game will be standing still, Microsoft or any other player. No one can predict what the landscape will look like one year from now.
In any event, the Google Gears kills Microsoft stance is fundamentally flawed.
Michael Arrington trots out such a Microsoft is doomed thanks to Google argument, in defense of a Google buys Salesforce.com scenario.
Until last week it wasn’t clear exactly how Google would be competing with Microsoft’s dominance in the operating system and office space. But then Google introduced Google Gears…They’re bypassing the operating system (the browser is the new operating system) and their apps will now offer a real alternative to Outlook and Office. Small and medium sized businesses will no longer have just one real choice when loading (and paying for) software on their PCs. And when you combine all that stuff with Salesforce’s CRM apps and developer platform, Microsoft has a real problem. The future of software delivery is the browser.
Of course in the Google Cloud future vs. the Microsoft Desktop legacy battle, Google has a vested interest in pushing for the “future of software delivery is the browser.“ BUT, the browser is still accessed via the desktop, the laptop…which are run by operating systems. Usually, those operating systems are supplied by Microsoft.
Small and medium businesses today, and for the foreseeable future, will have the same (lack of) choice “when loading (and paying for) software on their PCs.” The operating system is often pre-loaded and it is typically a Microsoft OS.
Google will have an even harder time ruling the enterprise.
I spent this morning at the NYC Googleplex listening to the Google Apps Premiere pitch and heard the Google Enterprise pitch at the Enterprise Search conference last month.
Consumer-driven Google does not get the enterprise and it is unlikely that it will get meaningful enterprise customer business.
As I wrote Friday:
Microsoft dazed, confused and gasping for air? Google wishes. What big bad Google innovation is there that has escaped Microsoft?
Google is the undisputed leader in search and search advertising, for now. BUT the search game is the only one Google is winning, despite its endless efforts to diversify.
SEE: Google Office wins? Declares enterprise hierarchies ‘dead’
Do Google Apps really trump Nintendo Wii and Apple TV?
Is Google Enterprise Search a joke?
Google to big business: Google love belongs in the Enterprise!
