The man behind Google’s Cloud Platform: The Chrome/V8 story
By Tarry Singh at 29 March, 2009, 7:53 am
Interesting story this and also eerie as to how cleverly Google is turning into the mega company for the next 10 years of so. Google is signing about 3000 small businesses on a daily basis!!! That is a staggering number indeed. A couple of days back I had Scott Granneman’s publisher offer to send me his book he wrote on Google Apps and I was amazed at the simplicity of the seamless transition of consumers to Google’s platform. I will write in detail about the book as I owe it to Scott for the visibility on my blog. Here’s the link to the book anyways.
Companies don’t really make money out of web browsers – the Explorers, Safaris and Firefoxes of the internet. So why is a new one so important to Google? Why invest time and effort in a free product that generates no income for the company behind it? The answer is not in the browser itself, but in the things it can access: namely, web-based software programs. These are a source of revenue for Google. The company has high hopes for Google Docs, for example, an online suite of programs that replicates many of the desktop programs in Microsoft’s Office – Word, Excel and PowerPoint – the tools of the modern business. But to deliver better versions of those programs and others over the internet, you need better browsers, ones that can handle the code that will be thrown at them. Many of us already use web-based programs: e-mail accounts such as Hotmail, Yahoo mail or Googlemail, for example. But they are relatively simple: their complexity pales in comparison with the programs stored on the average computer desktop.
The sophistication of web applications is increasing much faster than the corresponding power of the browsers. It’s like having lots of high-performance sports cars using rutted, bumpy roads. And yet no car manufacturer has ever invested in road building. That sort of move would, after all, benefit competitors equally, not to mention being massively expensive. Software development doesn’t cost as much but the competitor problem remains. But Google says it doesn’t mind: without an improvement in browser performance, the company argues, we all suffer.
The ability to access complex programs through the web is known as “cloud computing”, and Google isn’t the only one arguing that it’s the way ahead. Even Microsoft, the company synonymous with applications and operating systems located on the desktop, has talked about moving into “the cloud”. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has promised an “operating system that runs in the internet” – something he has dubbed “Windows Cloud”. But for cloud computing truly to take off, web browsers need to be better.
No related posts.
No comments yet.