Android's Impact on the Marketplace
Let's face it... Google is getting Android out on many devices, not just phones...
At CES, there were media players, netbooks, tablets, phones, and more... because Google gives it out for free and it's open source. There have been many Linux distros that have been free for years, but never got the traction that Android is (I realize that it's Linux-based, but not marketed as a Linus distro...).
Where else will Android land? TV's? Desktop computers? Laptops?
To whom is it the biggest threat to? Apple? Microsoft? the Linux community?
I have really come to have a big distaste for Google and don't use their products save Google Maps and Google Earth.
At CES, there were media players, netbooks, tablets, phones, and more... because Google gives it out for free and it's open source. There have been many Linux distros that have been free for years, but never got the traction that Android is (I realize that it's Linux-based, but not marketed as a Linus distro...).
Where else will Android land? TV's? Desktop computers? Laptops?
To whom is it the biggest threat to? Apple? Microsoft? the Linux community?
I have really come to have a big distaste for Google and don't use their products save Google Maps and Google Earth.
Comments
The problem Linux has is that people get too much control over things they aren't likely to change and it's only distributors that change things and cause incompatibilities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._distributions
Google comes along with a standard version backed by a huge international company and it has big potential to take over that 2% Linux marketshare. Just see how quickly Chrome shot past Safari.
I kind of like what they're doing. It's a shame it's at the expense of Apple in some ways but it's still pushing software down a good route - away from dependence on Microsoft. Plus, Apple have a strong selling point for now and Google won't take that away.
The push to HTML 5 video on Youtube could be massive if they just hit the kill switch. Youtube gets 1 billion hits per day. If a large portion of those 1 billion people suddenly see an error message saying:
"Sorry, your browser is not compatible with HTML 5 video, please upgrade to Chrome, Safari or Firefox"
then one of Microsoft's (and Adobe's to some degree) biggest strangleholds on the world is gone in one fell swoop.
As Google's share grows and they use some cash incentives to port apps and games to it, that pays off for Mac users too as developers start focusing more on unix support and again moving away from proprietary APIs like DirectX.
It would have been good to have Google firmly behind Apple's software and products but Google and Microsoft are in fierce competition for search. No matter how much they support Apple, it can't affect Microsoft quickly enough or badly enough to ensure their long term strength in their main line of business.
With Microsoft owning 80%+ marketshare, they can promote Bing in any number of ways and make it the default search box in their IE8 browser. Case in point:
http://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feed...dbackID=406387
"I have the same problem, running ie8 with XP SP3 - current version of ie8 and this error message is very annoying - bing is set as my default browser, even though I specified google and would like to use google"
Google has little choice but to start doing the browser and OS. Partnering up can only go so far.