… subtitled: I, like my friend John Furrier, Was Right About Chrome OS

In case you’ve forgotten, I’m here to remind you of all the dire predictions, which in my estimation were probably made to garner more pageviews and TV appearances, that Google was intending to compete head on with the big boys (Microsoft and Apple) in the operating system market with the release of Chrome OS.

Yes, I’m talking about CNet’s Tom Krazit, TheNextWeb’s Zee,ZD’s Mary Jo Foley, Mashable’s Ben Parr, Fake Steve Jobs, and of course the loudest of them all, Techcrunch’s MG Siegler.

All of these pundits predicted loudly, both on their blogs and on national cable television, that Google had just fired a shot across the bow of Microsoft and Apple, and that the hot war was officially on.

As you may or may not remember, I went in to laborious detail as to why these pundits were wrong, and that this wasn’t a play at the big dogs (you can refresh here, here and here).

The short version is, though, that the Internet has plenty of room left to grow, particularly at the lower income end of the spectrum. These devices that Chrome OS is designed to run on are in a realm that generally isn’t profitable for Microsoft and Apple to exploit, and it is profitable for Google to do so.

This Perspective Was Validated Today

As you probably picked up on from John’s three posts from this morning (here, here and here), the Google Chrome OS was officially unveiled this morning.

One of the things I noticed was a lot of the questioners there in the briefing were picking around on the carcass of that dead angle – that this was a play at Microsoft and higher end machines.

I’ve picked through on a few choice quotes from the presenters that show that their intentions were otherwise.

“We’re focused on user needs, not strategies as far as competing with other companies.” – Sergey Brin.

“We’re not focused on expanding out Google Chrome OS to other hardware types. This is not an operating system for full featured laptops, we’re focused on this specific set.”

In other words, some times an operating system is just an operating system.

The Numbers Support This Theory as Well

  There are tons of users throughout the world that, due to economic condition, can’t afford the typical non-netbook $1000 computing device. The rise in popularity of the netbook is a testament to this fact, but the truth is that hardware manufacturers aren’t getting rich off this trend – one of the biggest non-hardware expenses for building the machine is the OEM license for XP or Win7.  An XP license will probably cost between $30-70 (depending on the clout of the manufacturer), and the price of the machine can range between $300-700, making the license a full 10% of the device price.

In the end, this 10% may or may not be an incredible influencing factor for the end user, but it will entice more hardware manufacturers to focus on their netbook lines more intensely, which will eventually drive down both manufacturing costs through scale and competition.

The end result is a cheaper machine that manufacturers can actually profit from.

This, in turn, benefits Google by increasing usership of the web, as well as giving end users a greater propensity for trusting Google with their cloud app usage over other providers.

Again, this doesn’t really hurt Microsoft at all – they’re not in the XP business and they don’t want to be. Apple could care less, too – the day they sell a computing device for less than $700 is the day Steve Jobs turns in his turtleneck for flannel.

We’ll Be Watching the Pundits Closely Today

I’ll be curious as to how many pundits will be recanting their earlier statements or if they’ll persist in pushing forward this false narrative that this is somehow the start of the “Great OS Wars.”

A lot of the pundits I’ve mentioned pushing this theory forward are folks I count amongst my friends and my talented peers in the tech blogging world.  That doesn’t change the fact that they were dead wrong on this one, and for that I’ll continue holding their feet to the flame on it.