A lot has been said and written about the Google Chrome OS even before it has released. Wow!!! Funnily, a majority of the commentators are touting it as a "Windows Killer". Some are quite surprised by Google's decision to release an OS! I guess even an average computer user would have been predicting this for quite some time now.

My take is that in the longer run, Chrome OS might nibble into Windows' declining share but I doubt if it is going to get rid of Windows within the next decade as predicted by a handful of "experts". Before you start waving your hand in disagreement, let me make my case.

I collected Microsoft's annual revenues and various analyst views on their forecasts on the topic and studied them. Most sounded fairly dismissive of a major impact to Microsoft's client business from Chrome OS.

Here are the annual revenues for your interpretation:

Sales Income Operating Profit
03 04 05 06 07 08 09 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
32187 36835 39788 44262 51122 60420 59838 7531 8168 12254 12599 14065 17681 15159 13353 14867 14561 16472 18524 22491 21013

Two points to note from the above data are:

  • Though the Client Business which accounts for only 25% of the Microsoft's profits seems to be slowly affected by other alternatives (like Linux), the revenue from this division is gradually increasing because of support revenue from enterprises.
  • The forecast for 2009 is very conservative and can be revised upwards if Windows 7 clicks.

So if you are a Microsoft fanboy, you can assure yourself that the current situation isn't going to change overnight.

Where does Chrome OS fit?

The segment where Chrome OS would have maximum impact is ARM-powered netbooks. On the other hand, it would have the least penetration on the enterprise side.

Who is likely to migrate to Chrome OS?

  • Netbook buyers towards end of 2010
  • Google fanboys. Oh boy!!! There are a lot of them
  • People who don't care about the UI of an OS. All they love using is facebook or twitter. These people wouldn't even care for the browser they use (and most sadly use IE6). They would be attracted to the low cost of the netbooks and might migrate.

Who's not going to migrate to Chrome OS?

  • Enterprises.
  • People not comfortable with having their data on the cloud.
  • High-end users. These folks usually use Photoshop, Flash, Matlab etc.
  • Folks from countries where an internet connection is still not very usable.

My time for a prediction

Almost everyone's made one...why should I be left behind?

Chrome OS validates the Linux kernel hackers efforts of porting the OS to as many architectures as possible. Probably 2011 might be the so far elusive year of "The Linux Desktop".

Chrome OS is going to have a limited impact in the desktop market too. Why live in the browser when Moore's law is at work? It might gain a 10% market share in 5 years and around 40% in the netbook market for the same period. I am projecting a high number in the netbook market because hardware vendors might release lots of ARM powered netbooks and Windows stands no chance in this segment.

So is Microsoft going to keep quite? Probably not, but they are definitely not going to panic. They have a large userbase and can adopt the "Wait and Watch" policy. If they believe Chrome OS will be a hit, they'll have a similar offering.

Surprisingly, not many people have talked about how Chrome OS affects either Apple or the Linux Desktop community.

I think there's something cooking in Apple. Lots of rumours are indicating they are probably designing a chip for a netbook or an MID? We'll have to wait for an announcement from Apple. The Linux community on the other hand wouldn't be adversely affected because Chrome OS gets added to the zillions of distributions and the users are most likely to be displaced from a few distros to Chrome. So it's bad news for some distros but good news for the Linux Desktop community as a whole.

Google has open-sourced the effort like Android but it has to been seen how transparent the process of making and deploying apps is. The community's reaction and marketing the concept to hardware vendors will be the key to Chrome OS' success.

Has to be seen if Windows ecosystem or Google's brand win eventually!


Updates to safebrowsing-python

Thu 02 April 2009 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Updates to Safebrowsing-python

Two days back, I made quite big changes to safebrowsing-python, the python library for looking up blacklisted URLs against Google's updated phishing and malware database.

The changes are:

  • Added support for databases like Mysql, Postgresql. Previously, SQLite was the only supported database.
  • It is quite easy to …
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Launch of Safebrowsing-python

Thu 17 January 2008 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Launch of Safebrowsing-python

Today I launched my second project online after django-check-constraints, safebrowsing-python. The project is based on the Google Safebrowsing API. Check out the announcement on the google-safebrowsing-api mailing list and also the usage wiki page at the project home.

Wish you a happy and safe browsing on the …

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Google Safe Browsing and Django Newforms

Mon 12 November 2007 by Thejaswi Puthraya

Google Safe Browsing and Django Newforms

What is Google Safe Browsing

It is an API that enables applications to check URLs against Google's constantly updated blacklists of suspected phishing and malware pages. For more check out http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/

Why use Google Safe Browsing?

Nowadays everyone is …

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