Clouds Versus Islands

With their characteristic lack of fanfare, Google announced today that they would be releasing an operating system based on their browser, Chrome. They've long ago learned that they, like Apple, needn't bother making a big deal out of it because the media will do it for them. Already, most every news outlet and blog has started making echos touting the start of the new era and how Google is ready to challenge Microsoft.

Color me skeptical, but I don't think this is going to be any bigger than the launch of Microsoft's Bing search 'decision' engine: a modest success, but nothing earth-shattering or even really threatening to the incumbent. Why? Quite simply, Google will be stepping outside their core competency, and they very nature of the announced operating system shows it. Google is exceptionally good at re-inventing old ideas in the image of the internet. But the operating system is fundamentally different in one very important way: whereas most of the things Google has tackled in the past tended to be ideas that evolved from the desktop into the internet in a piecemeal fashion, the operating system's role and purpose is to control the computer on which it resides. In unveiling a 'Cloud' desktop, Google is (not so) implicitly stating that they want to turn the computer into nothing but a portal to the internet.

This idea isn't new. It's called the thin client approach, and it's been around for a while. However, while it has some benefits, it suffers from a number of problems in execution, which are more than mere technical obstacles. The first is that it largely ignores the capabilities of what the machine itself can do. Yes, this can work in environments with cheaper hardware, but hardware itself is so cheap that it seems absurd not to go ahead and add the power to it. And if it exists, other operating systems will take advantage of it. The second is response time. Barring some advance that trumps the light-speed barrier, a network will never be faster for small operations than a local processor, because the latency in the network will be far greater (if for no reason other than distance) than the latency on the hardware bus inside the computer. For snappy response time, there's just no substitute for having the machine right there. And as Microsoft has learned the hard way, users value snappy response times above many, many other things.

But even if we were to say that people accept very 'dumb' terminals for price and put up with slower computing, there's the issue of ownership. At the end of the day, the data has to reside somewhere, and if it's not on your computer, then you're at the mercy of the internet for access. The internet was not designed to facilitate centralization, it was designed to be resiliently decentralized. That is, it will make a best effort to get information through, but at the end of the day you and you alone are responsible for making sure important information is available. For access to any kind of critical data, be it business, personal, or governmental, this is unacceptable. If Michael Jackson can stress the internet to the breaking point, what would happen if real trouble started? It's even more of a gamble for countries in which Google doesn't physically operate: not only do you not have your data, but you have no legal recourse to get it back short of basically begging. In other words, in the event of an emergency, an island may be disconnected, but it is still solid ground. The same can't be said for a cloud.

Don't get me wrong. I love Google, and I think they've become a role model for how responsible corporations should operate. I would be very surprised if the new Chrome OS made more than a small dent in the adoption of Windows, especially given how competitive it's become of late. In fact, a Chrome OS may be better poised to unseat Linux distros as the free operating system of choice, as Google will undoubtedly apply a level of fit and finish to the product that most Linux distros (yes, even Ubuntu) haven't the discipline to create. Google may even have a firm grip on the limits of scope, and simply decline to stop the media echo chamber. After all, who wouldn't want free publicity? But I think this is at most a mild jab in a sparring match between titans, not a finishing blow.