Anthony Doesburg: Cloud programs rain on Microsoft's parade

A Google operating system (OS) comes as no surprise to anyone immersed in the web world. Rod Drury, head of accounting software company Xero, was speculating about it late last year.

But Drury has a greater interest than most in the doings of Google. Xero - like Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, YouTube and numerous other Google programs - is not installed on the user's hard drive.

Instead, they are web-based programs that run in the "cloud". Xero is a local pioneer of cloud computing, and Google is making it a mass-market phenomenon by coming up with more and more useful, free programs that run on its computers and are accessed by millions over the internet.

This is a dramatic change from the traditional approach to personal computing. In the Microsoft-dominated world - Apple, with the Mac OS X, is just a bit player - we buy a PC with Windows pre-installed, shelling out hundreds more for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software.

By exploiting its near-monopoly position, Microsoft has foisted bloated software on the world, become indecently rich - 2008 sales were US$60 billion ($95.3 billion) - and set itself up for a fall. Google, in the nicest possible way, is wanting to assist in Microsoft's decline.

Google Docs does for free what costs up to $1000 with Microsoft Office. Chrome, a Google web browser launched late last year, has nabbed 30 million potential Microsoft Internet Explorer users. Now Chrome OS, as Google has christened its forthcoming operating system, is being readied to take on Windows.

The promise of Chrome OS is that it will be simpler, faster - getting users on to the web in seconds - and more stable than Windows. It will initially be developed for netbooks, the new breed of bare-bones laptops ideal for web browsing and emailing.

Chrome OS will also, presumably, be free since it is based on the open-source Linux operating system; and, paradoxically, because that is the way Google has worked out to make money.

The Microsoft of the web-search world, with the cute motto "don't be evil", figures that smoothing users' way online means they'll notice more of the ads that bring in about US$20 billion a year in revenue.

How long, though, before the motto wears thin?

Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist