Sundar Pichai, vice president for product management, said that Google’s free Chrome operating system would be fast and get users onto the Web in a few seconds.
SAN FRANCISCO — If at times you’re frustrated with your PC — and who isn’t? — Google says it is working on a solution.
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Many people easily lose patience with PCs that are slow to start up and prone to crashing, vulnerable to virus attacks and constantly in need of fiddly updates. Hoping to turn that irritation to its advantage, Google is developing an operating system — the underlying software that handles the most basic functions of a computer. With the software, Google is mounting a blunt challenge to the dominance of Microsoft, whose Windows operating system runs about 95 percent of PCs. Google promises that its Chrome operating system, which will be available on computers in the second half of next year, will put an emphasis on speed, simplicity and security. Google faces enormous hurdles. Computing giants likeI.B.M. and Sun Microsystems have spent years trying to dethrone Microsoft, with little to show for it. But if it gains traction, Google’s plan could undermine not only Windows but also Microsoft’s other multibillion-dollar franchise, Office. Google is trying to put the Web browser at the center of people’s digital lives, relegating complicated operating systems like Windows to a secondary role. “I’m not saying the shareholders should take their money and run, but this is the beginning of the end of Microsoft as we knew it,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, a venture capitalist who has battled Microsoft in posts at Apple and his own computer company, Be. A spokesman for Microsoft, Frank Shaw, declined to comment on Google’s announcement or the competitive threat. The new software’s primary mission will be to run Google’s Chrome browser, which will serve as a quick on-ramp to Web sites and online applications like Gmail and Facebook. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the Web in a few seconds,” Sundar Pichai, a vice president for product management, and Linus Upson, an engineering director, said in a blog post announcing the project late Tuesday. “We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better.” The plan is part of Google’s bet that a huge shift in computing is under way. In Google’s view, Web connections will become so fast and browsers so powerful that most of the programs that currently run on PCs will be replaced by online applications. That would eliminate the need to install, upgrade and back up software. Analysts say advances in technology make that vision more realistic today than when the browser company Netscape unsuccessfully championed it a decade ago. But Microsoft still has many advantages. It has been able to keep its software partners churning out games, media software, tax preparation software and other applications that rely on Windows. And it puts time and money into making sure that a vast array of devices like printers and cameras work well with its software. While Google’s new software will be free, other free products have failed to dent Microsoft’s armor. A handful of companies offer the free Linux operating system as an alternative to Windows, but Linux has not gained enough market share to weaken Microsoft. (The Chrome operating system will have Linux at its core, and like Linux it will be open source, meaning outside programmers will be able to modify it.) What’s more, Google’s operating system remains in its earliest stages of development, and there is no guarantee that the company can deliver on its promises. Other software projects from Google, like its Android operating system for mobile phones, have had only limited success in the market so far. Yet with Google’s latest effort, some argue that the right company has hit on the right idea at the right time. “Google has a reasonable stab at redefining the desktop,” said Mark Shuttleworth, the chief executive of Canonical, which makes a version of Linux called Ubuntu. Rather than buying bulky desktop computers, consumers have been turning recently toward small, low-cost laptops known as netbooks, which serve as little more than gateways to the Web. Google says its operating system will be initially aimed at netbooks, which are generally not powerful enough to handle the latest version of Windows. Google’s fundamental business model, too, may play to its advantage. The company says it believes that making Chrome free to PC makers will be worthwhile because more people will spend more time online, using Google’s search service and its other Web-based applications like Google Docs, a Web rival to Microsoft Office. That will help Google make more money from advertising, which accounts for nearly all of its $22 billion in annual revenue. That approach essentially reverses some of the dynamics used by Microsoft to crush Netscape. At the time, Netscape charged $50 for its Web browser, and Microsoft undermined its leadership by making its own browser, Internet Explorer, free. Now it is Microsoft that faces free rivals to both Windows and Office, its two biggest cash cows. Under its model, Google could even afford to pay computer makers to install its software on their machines, essentially subsidizing their cost. “If hardware is free and software is free, the only way you make money is off of services, and that is Google,” said Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation. Microsoft, while slow to act, has not stood still. It is in the process of creating many of the same online applications as Google, although it has been less willing to make them free. In addition, Microsoft has blunted the popularity of Linux on netbooks. When they first appeared two years ago, the vast majority of netbooks came with Linux. Today, Microsoft’s older Windows XP software sits on more than 90 percent of netbooks in the United States, according to NPD, a market research firm. But neither of those efforts can deliver the level of profits that Microsoft has enjoyed as it dominated the world of computing for the last two decades. “There are answers for Microsoft, but all of them entail a significantly less profitable business model,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School.
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