Lumpy's Corner

Lumpy was polite and only though... Poppycock!!! Microsoft is doing a great job at "unestablishing" Windows. First, they released Millennium Edition, an operating system that seemed to work for only about a dozen people. Future released of Windows featured added security holes and encouraged spyware. They stacked the anti-establishment deck higher by making Explorer about as secure as a lockless car with a peeled steering column and a screwdriver on the seat. Last but not least, they further distance the consumer by delaying the release of Longhorn, which sounds more like XP plus than anything new. Although I doubt Microsoft will disappear, it is evident they are waning. The people at Microsoft might be wise to take some of their cash and take advantage of the fact that Google has gone public. People thought IBM would always be the computer company and the RIAA wanted the CD to be the last media format.

Things change... The market goes to those who best identify the needs of the ever-hungry consumer and meet those needs. Google is great at both of these requirements. The average consumer desires music CDs about as much as spyware.

Google used to be just a small search engine company. Others have already written about this. That has been changing for years.

Let us look at the following time-line:

• 1 April 2004 - "Gmail" is announced a full gig of searchable, free web based e-mail. Their was much speculation as to how they could pull that off. In fact, many, myself included, thought it was another one of their hoaxes such as pigeon rank and this job opening. (Lumpy really wants to know if anyone actually tried to apply.) Turned out to be one of, it not the, best marketing tactics in the history of the Internet.
• 4 April 2004 - Rich Skrenta, co-founder and CEO of Topix.net, writes and excellent blog, "The Secret Source of Google's Power". It is about the technical aspects of how Google can serve up searched web pages if fractions of a second. Although there is much debate in the comments over what OS, hardware and method they are using, nobody contests the fact that they are serving up searches in fractions of a second. Rich also mentions that Rob Pike, who was involved with Plan 9, is now employed by Google. He also points out the volume of research done at Google.
• 6 April 2004 - Jason Kottke, a blogger so prolific that he blogs full time, writes GooOS, the Google Operating System. Jason references Rich's article and expands on the fact that Google is not a search engine company. He is confident that they are working on an OS as well.
• 25 April 2004 - Google Inc., reserves the Gbrowser.com domain.
• 7 March 2005 - Google Desktop is released.
• 13 July 2004 - Google acquires Picasa
• 27 October 2004 - Google acquires Keyhole Inc.
• May 2005 - Google releases it's web accelerator. This type of item must use caching. This leads me to believe that Rich is likely much much more right than wrong, despite what the dissenters say in the comments.

I am aware that Google has acquired other companies as well. The two listed above, however, are clearly not related to search engine related. Jason Kottke wrote some time ago that Google is not a search engine company.

So what do we conclude? I feel it is more likely true than not. Google is huge. They have, as of April 2004, 100,000 servers. Google is good at what they do. Google is Internet marketing. A browser, as Matt (and others) pointed out, is the next logical step.

When they do release it, I am sure we will hear about it. Google cannot escape media attention. For example, 7 May 2005, was Google hacked Day... (According to Google, it was "DNS problems".) I heard about it on the radio, on podcast, and on the television. Somebody told me it made the national news. Most of us are also aware of their accelerator despite the fact that there seems to be no Google press release related to it.

Google, in years past, was a small upstart search engine. Now, although the name is so synonymous with search that people actually say "Google it", they are much, much more... Thinking that they would stop growing would be about as logical as arguing than Microsoft should have stuck with DOS and saved the R&D money. It seems logical that they would be developing an operating system. It is certain that they have their own OS and file system to manage all of the data as well as they do. Why would they not develop an operating system for the consumer? After all, they seem to know the consumer, especially the web consumer, better than anyone else.

Furthermore, I would expect that they will be insanely successful at it. Why? Because they are good at not only predicting what their users want but they deliver on it. When the Google search engine goes down, it is not only a news item but it feels like something is missing. Most of us already regard Google as an extension of our desktop.

How many of us now use Gmail? Lumpy likes his Gmail. Google pleases us. We trust Google. (Well most of us, there always has to be that one dissentor although his credibility is somewhat questionable.) When is the last time you said something good about Windblows?

Google has a custom built system of managing its many files, caching the Internet, manages your e-mail, and does so almost flawlessly. They have a disproportional amount of highly educated software engineers working for them; they (regardless of exactly how) are operating a highly efficient supercomputer and are very much in tune with the demands of the user.

Those highly educated, paper writing people at Google were not hired just to write papers. Furthermore, if they wrote the Google File System and customized an OS to handle all the data Google does, how much of a stretch is it to engineer a system for the consumer?

And for those of you who are skeptical, recall that they could not pull off searching the web, gmail or acquisitions... After all, "they are just a search engine company"...