8th Jul 2009
Google steps up its World domination bid

Overnight, Google announced what to many won't be a surprise but will send shockwaves across the digital industry. Google is to take its new but already successful Web browser, Chrome, which it claims has over 30m users and establish it as an OS  - a computer Operating System - taking the fight straight to Microsoft, which has enjoyed market dominance with Windows since what seems like the year dot.

 

Google Chrome OS will initially be targeted at mini laptops or 'netbooks' but from the end of next year, will be made available as an OpenSource browser and so you can expect it to start springing up across a nuber of computer brands. The focus will be to enable access to the Web and in true Google style give you better access to your information.

 

Microsoft will be worried. They still haven't got over the shockwaves that Google caused in the search market- despite the launch of Bing earlier this summer- and they will be very fearful that Google Chrome OS will be everything Windows is not. That is to say flexible, connected, integrated and of the 21st century.

 

Putting the competitive arguments aside, perhaps the biggest issue of this development means Google is staking a further claim to owning the computer and the Web and our information. Whilst Google is not foolish and is aware- having been burnt in the US- of just how sensitive the information issue is, you can be sure that they will be looking to exploit it in a way that is not just beneficial to the consumer but also, it goes without saying to them and their growing ambitions of being the World's largest media company.