Collision Course

Jim Fawcette wrote in his blog on the impending collision course between Google & Microsoft...are we making/reading too much into this Google OS stuff....maybe then again may be not?

Microsoft and Google are on a collision course, but the battle is about much more than searching for Web pages.

Google has the potential to become a primary interface for computing. Much as Lotus Notes aficionados spent their entire computing lives in Notes, Google potentially could and wants to become the platform through which users view the world.

You can see this evolving—even before Google has its IPO money to spend—with the introduction of Google News, Google Local, Gmail, Froogle, and ambitions for mobile products that are barely scratched by today's offerings. Google already has a little publicized "enterprise appliance," which is a server with Google search to use inside corporate firewalls.

In the extreme, this means Windows would be reduced to a bloated BIOS and a bunch of device drivers. You boot Windows, go to Google, and work from there. Microsoft kindly provides the browser stack, printer, and video drivers, so Google doesn't have to develop or deliver them, thank you very much, but Google, in this scenario, becomes the face of computing.