Google’s “Web OS”

July 8, 2009

News is everywhere about Google’s new desktop operating system.  About the best headline I’ve seen is TechCrunch’s “Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome.”

It’s somewhat good news – having alternate operating systems encourages competition in the marketplace and makes sure companies innovate.  However, I’m very worried about this news not being a Microsoft/Linux fanbox or a Google hater — there’s just some very disturbing aspects to both this specific product and the potential way Google is heading.

First up, the competition.  The idea it seems behind a “browser based OS” is pretty cool, and certainly applicable to the target market (netbooks) Google is initially aiming at.  Out of the two competitors for running the desktop, I think that Linux is likely to suffer more than Microsoft.  Linux (IMO) is suited to the “try new stuff” people and they will most likely be the early adopters.  There’s certainly going to be some loss in Microsoft’s market share – netbooks is a growing market and Windows 7 is trying to target that.  However, unless netbook manufactures are going to factory install Google’s OS (something that Microsoft is likely to fight hard against happening, and/or unless buyers give the netbook manufactures overwhelming requests for the option), there’s an inertia that has to be overcome.  Everyone knows Windows, how it works, that no matter what you can share with practically everyone else, and the number of tools, utilities, plugins, etc, etc, available – that’s a mightily large incentive you have to displace.  Also, as Google is finding to their benefit right now, even if you have a “better” product, lots of people still won’t switch purely out of habit.

Next, security.  OSes are notoriously difficult to write and to secure.  Google is making the task a little easier by narrowing the focus down (just get one application, the browser, to run and have everything else execute on top of that), but we’ve been seeing browser bugs forever so even that approach isn’t totally effective.  Having an OS that that is a) as homogeneous as a single application to target and b) by definition always connected to the public internet is just a scary target IMO.  I would guess that Google is going to look at using their native code technology, and the fact that Mark Dowd (a God amongst us in the security industry and who’s word carries a lot) has “blessed” the project as secure means a lot, doesn’t spell the end of it – the guys that were part of the security contest looking at the code only had 3 months which sounds like a long time but with any large, complex, codebase time gets eaten up quickly just understanding all the things that it does and how it does them, let alone finding all the edge cases (and this is even considering that the people working on the contest were “full time”, with I highly doubt many, if any at all, were).  So, I believe that unless Google is really careful, and there’s no reason for me to think they wont be, it’s a) going to be a nice target (web+connected to the internet+homogeneous+know problems with web/browser applications) and b) going to take considerable time/effort to get right.

My biggest concern however is the principal behind it.  Writing such an OS (or any major technology for that matter) takes a lot of time and effort.  In a company, that costs “mucho dinero”.  The stated plan is to use Open Source principals/development, but it’s rare that people will do things out of the goodness of their hearts.  So, what are the people developing OSS-fashion are going to get?  Probably the same as Linux dev, but without the distro’s (which people can sometimes make money off) – credibility, bragging rights, skill/experience, etc.  Google, what do they get?  Other than hating Microsoft and going after another of their sacred cows, this is where it gets really scary for me.

Google you see is not a search engine company.  It’s not a software company either.  It’s an advertising company.  That’s how it keeps everything it does free to the consumers by placing ads.  The (considerable) software development and operational costs it takes to bring you search results, GMail, Google Maps, etc, etc, is offset by them bringing in advertising dollars.  Fantastic I say – the fact that they have found an alternate revenue stream, can bring such products to consumers for “free”, and make lots of money themselves is just genius.  However, to make these ads that are pushed out more meaningful and targeted (and therefore ask a higher price to the advertiser because of better conversion rates), Google needs to know a lot about you.  Either through simple stuff like what page you are looking at (context), what you’ve done in the past (history), who you interact with (social graph and shared likes/interests), etc, etc.  The more that is collected, the more ads can be targets, the more valuable those ads become.

Now, I thought Google Voice was scary enough when it was announced a while back.  Being able to track who you are calling, who’s calling you, and the content of the calls is just frightening (yes, I know it’s opt-in but I’m not going down there right now).  However, add the opportunity of tracking your every move while working online in a web-OS, gathering data on likes, dislikes, things you are working on, sites you visit, how often you are on and when/where you buy stuff online – I’m not sure that a company who’s goal is finding out that info could resist seeing some of that data.  Unless it was a non-evil company, which Google obviously is, otherwise they wouldn’t have it on their mission statement. :p

Here’s the problem with that.  Microsoft, Linux, Apple, etc, all produce an operating system but their primary motivation is to sell you that OS and keep you on the platform so that you will buy/use their other products (and sometimes services, but it’s a lot less of a simple tie-in).  A company that makes 90%+ of it’s profits on knowing about it’s users patterns has, I believe, a different motivation.  I’m not saying it’s their sole motivation, or maybe not even a motivation at all (right now), but there’s somewhat a conflict of interests going on.

So, I’m not saying that there’s malicious intentions going on in Google’s collective mind, but there’s certainly another “opportunity” to gather more data here, which is something they love to do.  In the 80’s/90’s Microsoft was known as the evil empire and rumors abounded that they were spying/listening on the users of their software.  I hope that Google doesn’t get the same reputation, although the train is going really fast down those tracks.  The marketplace and security issues are a concern, but the biggest is the privacy and potential interests of being in a totally different revenue stream.  I think Google should silo off this OS to the other “data gathering efforts” they have going come out as well as come up with a work-class “open” privacy policy (and perhaps have 3rd party verification?), and not just warm-and-fuzzy statement of “not evil”, “open source”, and “published privacy policies”, in order to nip any potential of the general public thinking that way in the bud.

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