The Italian cartoonist, Federico Fieni, portrayal of how Google is challenging Microsoft with Chrome is very appropriate considering how many ways Google has encroached on what was once a Microsoft domain. Consider the following…
Mashable.com announced today that Google Chrome Launches for the Mac. Google recognizes the growth of Mac user due to the the huge success of the iPhone and doesn’t want to miss out on any part of this growing market. In contrast MS killed IE for the Mac.
Google Apps for Education: The 19th National Survey of Computing and IT in Higher Education reveals that 59% of 4-year universities and colleges use hosted email named Google as their provider.
The only reason that Microsoft is still holding onto to second position is that many institutions are using Exchange and the MS online suite fits much better with the existing Exchange and MS Office infrastructure. A closer look at these situations would also reveal that MS Office and Exchange are more important to institutional administration than they are to faculty, learners and general staff.
The eweek article Five Reasons Why Android Could Kill Windows Mobile points out that Googles Android mobile operating system will more than likely kill Windows Mobile because:
- Android’s Market Share Is Climbing Fast – while MS Windows Mobile has dropped significantly.
- It’s an App, App World – Open source holds promise for the development of thousands of app. Lets not forget that Apple has close to 100.000 apps in its app store.
- Lack of Other OS Competitors – other than Apple no one else is actively attempting to port an operating system onto an mobile phone.
- The Hardware Pairing – the Motorola Droid sold over 250,000 units in its first week which is much more than any Windows device but significantly less than Apple which sold 1.6 million 3GS units in the first week.
- Windows Mobile 7 Is an Unknown – still several months away from release no one knows how well the OS will do against Android or iPhone.
It will be interesting to watch and see what else Microsoft looses over to Google. While I appreciate the options that Google now offers I am concerned that we may be trading in one monopoly for another. Time will tell.
