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Is anyone else bothered by the fact that Google is fragmenting its own OSs?
I honestly don't see the point of Chrome OS when you can use Honeycomb on a tablet or one that turns into a netbook like the Asus Transformer. I think it would be much smarter to put Chrome as the default web browser in Android and for Google to just push Android in the netbook/tablet market. What do you guys think? I think Google's cannibalization it's own OSs by having Chrome OS and Android compete with each other in the OS space...
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From conversations I've had with people who work at Google Chrome OS looks to be an enterprise oriented product where the aim is to get companies, especially SMEs, education and certain branches of Government, to migrate to a cloud-based OS and who don't need the power of a fully fledged desktop OS and/or who don't run enterprise-grade ERPs (i.e. SAP, Oracle).
They will start by leveraging off their existing installed user base of Google Apps for Enterprise/Education/Government for whom a thin-client model makes sense and then grow from there. So the target isn't just companies running on Windows, most of who don't use 90% of the OS's capabilities but are paying exorbitant license and upgrade fees not only for the OS itself but for Office, Exchange, etc. - they would experience substantial cost savings by migrating to the $50 per user per year model offered by Google Apps for Enterprise. To support other Enterprise requirements Google has quietly built up a nice selection of web apps that plug into their Apps ecosystem: https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/
So to me it does make sense to have both Chrome OS and Android running in parallel and given that much of the back-end (cloud-based) architecture is the same it's probable that at some point we'll see the two merge.
However, I wouldn't underestimate the appeal of Chrome OS work stations & laptops for the Enterprise segment for companies who want to run a lightweight, low-cost, low maintenance IT solution assuming that what Google Apps + 3rd party apps offers meets their needs which, if many companies really examine it, will find that it does.
They will start by leveraging off their existing installed user base of Google Apps for Enterprise/Education/Government for whom a thin-client model makes sense and then grow from there. So the target isn't just companies running on Windows, most of who don't use 90% of the OS's capabilities but are paying exorbitant license and upgrade fees not only for the OS itself but for Office, Exchange, etc. - they would experience substantial cost savings by migrating to the $50 per user per year model offered by Google Apps for Enterprise. To support other Enterprise requirements Google has quietly built up a nice selection of web apps that plug into their Apps ecosystem: https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/
So to me it does make sense to have both Chrome OS and Android running in parallel and given that much of the back-end (cloud-based) architecture is the same it's probable that at some point we'll see the two merge.
However, I wouldn't underestimate the appeal of Chrome OS work stations & laptops for the Enterprise segment for companies who want to run a lightweight, low-cost, low maintenance IT solution assuming that what Google Apps + 3rd party apps offers meets their needs which, if many companies really examine it, will find that it does.
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There's another issue, Google is never quite sure how successful a given product will be, so they'll always be trying multiple things. They had their own Google Video site that they still worked on after buying YouTube. In the case of Chrome OS vs Honeycomb, Honeycomb hasn't been received very well - the best selling Honeycomb device is the Eee Pad Transformer, which is being bought for the hardware rather than the software, and it's a device that makes much more sense with Windows 8 (and there will be a Windows 8 Eee Pad Transformer 2). Honeycomb might fail to make any sort of dent in the tablet market, so it's not worth it to them to bet everything on Android. It's also important to understand that their business model is based on protecting search, so if they can get anyone using any kind of Google OS, that by default uses Google search, that keeps Bing or Ask from catching up to them. They were successful with Android because of the exclusivity agreement Apple had with AT&T, but people aren't buying tablets with contracts, and despite Android having already surpassed iOS on smartphones, people just weren't interested in Honeycomb tablets. So it's quite feasible that Google only is successful with Android on smartphones, and that the OS doesn't scale up successfully, so they need Chrome OS as an alternative. On the other hand, if they have people using Chrome OS and Android, they're even happier as that's even more marketshare and search protection they have going on.
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