This week we got our first look at Google’s new lock down operating system on a couple of upcoming netbooks. There is plenty of reporting around about what is wrong with Chrome, everything from cloud storage to local apps et al. That is not going to be Chrome’s problem though to us if you take it out a few years and give Chrome operating system say a 25% market share there is going to be a huge issue that no one has considered yet.
We tried and have yet to figure out how to install IE or Firefox on a chrome book. Isn’t that what caused MS so much trouble a few years back? Every other OS has to allow competing browsers on their system. The browser is just the beginning of the problem though as there are many programs that will fit into this anticompetitive stance. Image viewers, music players and it goes on and on, without local storage if Chrome becomes a major player there are going to be major problems coming from the EU and the feds.
The pricing model may be the only thing that keeps the EU out for now as these are seriously overpriced netbooks. We are seeing full size laptops with better hardware at Wal-Mart for less money out of the box so that will keep adoption way down for a while, but if these netbooks were priced fairly at around 199.00 adoption would be huge and quite scary for many reasons.
We get the feeling that Google is not ready for full adoption and is aware of these issues or these would be subsidized at a much lower price. Time will tell how this plays out, but for the short term it doesn’t look good for Chrome to become a major player.
