Odds are stacked against Chrome OS's success

Started by aruljothi, Jul 13, 2009, 05:26 PM

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aruljothi

Google's netbook-friendly Chrome OS takes direct aim at Microsoft, whose eight-year-old Windows XP leads the netbook market. But the odds are stacked against Google.
Despite its buzz, the odds are stacked against Google's Chrome OS becoming a serious rival to Windows.

Despite its buzz, the odds are stacked against Google's Chrome OS becoming a serious rival to Windows.

In competing with Windows, Google Chrome OS will have to deal with many of the same challenges Linux has: compatibility, usability, and unfamiliarity. The record isn't good: In the past year, Linux-based netbooks have rapidly lost market share to Microsoft, as people find that Linux doesn't work as expected, may not support the applications or peripherals they're used to using, and is just plain different.

"The propeller heads or early adopters understood what Linux was about," says Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC, a market research company. "But as netbooks have gone mainstream, users want the apps they are familiar with rather than the non-standard ones on Linux."

While sales of netbooks have exploded, Linux's market share on these devices has dramatically declined. In 2008, about 24.5% of netbooks shipped with an Linux operating system, estimates IDC. This year, it's expected to plunge to 4.5% and in 2010, only 3 percent of all netbooks will run a Linux OS.

Even if it offers the same or better features than similarly-equipped Windows notebooks, Google Chrome OS will face the same uphill battle Linux has.



Some of the earliest netbooks featuring Linux faced high rates of return because they did not support popular applications, says Shim.

"Many users found that the universe of applications compatible with Windows was much larger than those with Linux," Shim says. "So when they looked at their Linux netbooks not only did it run non-standard apps but also a graphical interface they weren't familiar with."

Chrome OS will run on top of a Linux kernel, although Google has said that it will have an entirely new interface and will run all web applications rather than native Linux apps.

Multimedia compatibility issues in some flavors of Linux helped add to early customer confusion, says Chris Kenyon, director of OEM services at Canonical, which supports Ubuntu. "Some of those Linux netbooks that didn't have Flash preinstalled or multimedia codecs pre-installed faced lot of problems," he says.

Translation: If a customer can't watch YouTube on her new netbook, she's more likely to return the netbook rather than install Adobe's Flash plugin for Linux.

What Google must do: Google Chrome OS can't afford to make those mistakes. Flash support and the ability to play a wide variety of multimedia files will have to be standard. And where popular application support is missing, Google will have to ensure that it provides satisfying alternatives (such as Google Docs in place of Microsoft Word).