The battle ahead: Google Chrome OS vs. Microsoft 'Windows 8'

Time to rethink Windows and Office

Despite the odds against Google Chrome OS, Microsoft's two-pillar strategy for maintaining its software stronghold no longer appears indestructible going into the next decade.

For now, Windows 7 fulfills a near-term objective for Microsoft: to help wipe clean from users' minds the marketing mistake that was Vista, and to refocus their attention on the company's strengths: applications that users want, respectable performance, and despite all effective counter-marketing by competitors, decent system security.

"Windows 8" cannot be a near-term fix, if there should even be a "Windows 8." The public is starting to question the need for an operating system designed to manage a myriad of hardware components that many users don't even have. Windows remains a monolithic remnant of 1980s technology, in an era when any company with resources and wherewithal that dared to start over from scratch could create a wholly new OS architecture that assembles itself, using the Web, to fit precisely the requirements of the computer that's using it at that time. A rethought Windows or other x86 operating system would not have to support technology that isn't there, especially if it isn't even being produced any more.

Likewise, in an era where software is becoming more "componentized," and Web applications can indeed demonstrate that small nuggets of functionality can be put to use in a comprehensive context, the era of Office's giant applications monstrosities does seem antiquated. It does seem at times that the only real purpose Microsoft has for prolonging this architecture is because that's the only way it knows how to monetize its investment in client apps -- it doesn't know another business model, and it can't seem to make one.

As quad-core and six-core and soon eight-core processors don't seem to be making everyday work all that much faster for consumers, Microsoft's value propositions for Windows and Office make less and less sense. It can't even adequately explain to consumers why "Ultimate" is ultimate; and it can't make the case for Internet Explorer 8's exclusive features without, quite literally, barfing. The proverbial handwriting has long since jumped off of Steve Ballmer's wall, and is now all over his face. After Windows 7 settles in, it's time for a huge change in Windows and Office. Huge.

Who's the dominant player now?

The facts that Internet Explorer did not fulfill Microsoft's objective of leveraging its existing pillars to conquer the Web, and that .NET has not fulfilled its objective of extending Microsoft's development platform reach firmly beyond Windows, are clear indications that the leverage strategy that worked for Microsoft in the 1990s against Netscape has pretty much run its course. But Google will attempt its own leverage strategy -- using its dominance on the Web to blast its software platform onto every PC, everywhere, all the time.

The irony of regulators who had clamped down so severely on Microsoft's misbehaviors in tying the browser to the operating system, allowing Google to attempt pretty much the same play -- tying the operating system to the browser -- is not only ripe for exploitation but also pretty likely. The European Commission officially declined Betanews' request for comment on this issue this afternoon. Google, the champion of openness and an "observer" in previous EC actions against Microsoft, may very well get a free pass on this move.

But Europe is not the world. Asian regulators, especially South Korea's Free Trade Commission, are paying closer attention to companies that use "open standards" as a leveraging tool for their own private interests. And in the US, which had given Microsoft a free pass throughout the Bush Administration, the new Justice Dept. antitrust chief is Christine Varney, the outspoken opponent of Microsoft's anti-Netscape behavior during the height of the first browser wars. The merest hint of funny business will trip this lady's alarm bells, and we will all hear the wave of discontent.

Meanwhile, if Microsoft does change Windows -- if it makes the huge platform changes that are required for it to make a fresh and renewed value proposition for its key software brands -- it seems almost foolish to think that its competitors would not use legal resources including Ms. Varney to cry foul. When the company changed the architecture of Vista's kernel to disallow certain classes of exploits, security companies complained because that, in turn, disallowed their software from vanquishing that class of exploits. It was the silliest complaint ever, but legislators listened. Magnify that prototype to the size and scope of remaking Windows in an image that competitors can't use to their advantage, and therein lay the danger for Microsoft.

At this point, there appear to be fewer choices for Microsoft moving into 2010 and beyond than to make big moves to reconfigure the platform from top to bottom, in a way which may make Chrome and Firefox and quite a lot of other stuff outmoded and ineffective. When that happens, Google will probably make use of its newfound skill at wooing the hearts of legislators and regulators, pleading that such a move will dis-enable its carefully laid plans to innocently tie the operating system to the Web browser.

This is a battle that will be played out in many courts. That fact alone favors one player, the only one that has ever been successful playing all courts at once in a multi-front war: Microsoft. It could still be a very bloody battle. And anyone who truly believes this is about "openness," as my colleague Jerry Pournelle would say, is drinking the wrong brand of Kool-Aid.