SAN FRANCISCO — In a direct challenge to Microsoft, Google announced late Tuesday that it is developing an operating system for PCs based on its Chrome Web browser.

The move sharpens the already intense competition between Google and Microsoft, whose Windows operating system controls the basic functions of the vast majority of personal computers. NYT

Google sez

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform. Press release

Looks like the revenge of Plan9 is on.

Discussing Sun’s efforts to build super dense systems, Gilder writes:

And with 1-terabyte drives, available next year, Bechtolsheim will be able to pack the Net into three cabinets, consuming 200 kilowatts and occupying perhaps a tenth of a row at Ask.com. Replicating Google’s 200 petabytes of hard drive capacity would take less than one data center row and consume less than 10 megawatts, about the typical annual usage of a US household.

(To me, the 10 megawatt/hours as the average consumption of a US household is an incredible number, but it turns out to be true. Also there is the, only an supply side economist would do this silly comparison to annual household use – really it’s more like 9000 times the annual use of a household.) The obvious flaw in the logic is the assumption that the size of the contents of the online network will remain about the same as storage costs drop – and Google is working hard to put more and more “stuff” online.

Nonetheless, one key question is the balance between centralized storage/compute centers and the edge and relative power efficiencies will make a big difference. If the dominant paradigm of computing becomes one of connecting your lightweight mobile device to a network and invoking operations somewhere in the cloud, the industry landscape will look very different from what it looks like today and computing will much more look like todays electrical system. Perhaps we will even see an ironic situation where computing becomes a centralized utility just when electrical power decentralizes or perhaps the decentralization of electric power generation will force decentralization of computing.

Locality has always been key to performance. But there are all kinds of locality. The data center cloud makes sense if high speed local networks are so much faster than the internet that it makes sense to centralize data centers, but the internet is fast enough that it makes sense to use remote data centers. That may be a durable balance or it may not.

Page and Brin had wanted an upgrade of an existing product, and they were unhappy with what they were hearing from the engineers. At first, they were stonily silent, slid down in their chairs, and occasionally leaned over to whisper to each other. Schmidt began with technical questions, but then he switched roles and tried to draw out Page and Brin, saying, “Larry, say what’s really bugging you.”

Page said that the engineers were not ambitious enough. Brin agreed, and said that the proposals were “muddled” and too cautious.

“We wanted something big” Page added. “Instead, you proposed something small. Why are you so resistant?”

The head of the engineering team said that the founders’ own proposed changes would be too costly in money, time, and engineering talent.

Schmidt, the only person at the meeting wearing a tie,  tried to summarize their differences. He noted that Brin and Page wanted to start by deciding the outcome, while the product team focused first on the process, and concluded that the engineering would prove too “disruptive” to achieve the goal.

In many organizations, “process” issues either internal to the engineering team or to the management teams are allowed to
dominate product development. Decisions on whether to provide some capability may be made, effectively, by an engineering team leader who is intent on protecting his/her authority over engineering resources, or a sales manager who has some dimwitted idea about market segmentation or internal power struggles or …..

The huge advantage companies like Google, or the Microsoft of 20 years ago, have is that the top management have technical and market understanding sufficient to overrule such concerns. It’s grimly hilarious to hear the standard stories about “customer centric” and “shareholder value” objectives from people working inside companies that are really dominated by internal politics and the career ladder plotting of management. Such companies running into a well financed monster like Google, have about as much chance as a gerbil in the piranha tank.