The point I’d like to make here is that Google may be phasing out Windows 7, not because of any inherent security flaws, but that it’s possible that licensing and maintenance costs are the driving factor to phasing out Windows. Perhaps Google feels that it could spend less effort maintaining internal security by using a Linux or Unix-based OS.

The article makes a number of interesting observations, particularly about hardware manufacturers and suppliers. It also makes mention of a number of upcoming hardware designs and the features they will bring. I’d recommend reading the piece, even if just for the factual knowledge it contains.

I’m afraid however, that I have to disagree with the author. In my opinion, I don’t believe that 2010 is the year of the Linux tablet. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that any Linux device will ever out-iPad the iPad. Linux aficionados have been proclaiming the ‘year of Linux’ on desktops for as far back as I can remember. Every year, every distribution, Linux fans rejoice and proclaim that the end is nigh for Microsoft and Apple domination, and that Linux is going to take over the world. Why? Because they believe that ‘free’ will triumph over commercial.

The author summarizes my perspective exactly (though completely unintended) in a later paragraph, where he says ‘In my opinion, Linux won’t offer this kind of magic. To bring magic like Apple does, Linux and the companies bringing Linux have to act like Apple. That means secrecy, a closed development model, a one-size-fits-all solution and one and only one manufacturer / organization which oversees hardware, software, marketing and the developer community. Not going to happen for free software and Linux!’ If we break down this statement meaningfully, we see that that in order to bring an almost perfect user experience, one needs to have a closed development model, and a single manufacturer designing both the hardware AND software. He continually pushes Android, an flavor of Linux being driven by a company (Google) with a lot of money behind it, and a development structure (management) that is not available in a community driven environment.

The author highlights another perspective I share (again, unintentionally I’m sure), when he states that ‘Android is much more popular, and the magic comes from Google, Google marketing Android at big device manufacturers and the platform being ‘pretty open’. Also, in contrary to my limited view, Google understood the issue about marketing and education. That’s why, in advent of the ballot screen, they ran huge adds outside on busstops, along highways and buildings at least in NL and UK and they even bought their own front page add on free newspapers read by millions of Dutch readers.’ It’s funny how advertising is so important even for something free. He realizes that the idealistic nature of Linux (free) is not merely enough to make people want it. Money (and lots of it) must be spent in order for something to be adopted. Nothing in life is free, and unfortunately, the majority of the Linux community seem to miss that fact.

The author concludes with a short(sighted) paragraph, stating that ‘Android on the tablet will be what Windows was on the desktop. But it will be easier for other Linux to co-exist with Android than with Windows, so for those who like to tinker the feature is pretty bright.’ But I thought that Linux by its very nature was supposed to be open, so that it can coexist easily with everything? Therefore, it shouldn’t be easier to code for Linux rather than Windows. Unfortunately, developers tend to code more for the platforms that make them money (but hey, everything in life should be free right? ), and the majority of developers will tend to code for the Windows desktop OS. Also, I think it is very short-sighted to conclude that Microsoft will not be targeting the tablet market as well.

This post may come across a little bit harsh toward Linux. However, the fact remains that without proper guidance/direction in the development of a Linux tablet OS, and proper marketing, Linux will never succeed. For this ‘free’ operating system to succeed, money, and lots of it, must be spent. The only problem is that it is not the general Linux community who will pay for it. Rather, it will be (is) big corporations (see Google) who fork out tons of money. It just seems that the Linux community does not get this fact, or, if they do, do not care about freeloading the money to support their dream of a ‘free’ OS.

A feature that very few people seem to have noticed/commented on is the E-mail notification feature. When someone makes a ‘comment’ on an item in your ‘news feed’, you are sent an email notification. What’s particularly interesting is that after you read the E-mail notification, and something else occurs on the same Buzz item, the original email appears to have the time-stamp changed, status set to unread, and the contents of the E-mail itself update dynamically to reflect the latest occurrences on that Buzz item. I have not yet tested whether the time-stamp changes only on IMAP accounts, or whether a similar ‘dynamic’ occurrence happens with POP accounts as well.

This aspect of Buzz intrigues me. I’d venture that this is Google’s first attempt at blurring the lines between Google Wave communication and E-mail. I suspect that once they perfect this technique of seemingly dynamic E-mail reception, the next logical step will be two-way communication from a single E-mail/Wave item.

One other thing intrigues me about Google Buzz. How will it affect Google’s news algorithms?

I think Google Buzz really is an algorithmically beautiful piece of work. The blurring and meshing of website content, Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, all with the ability to custom permission the ability for others to comment on your items. In a world where Facebook’s young leadership are attempting to strong-arm open all communication to public eye, Google seems to realize (after their first few days of dealing with Buzz backlash) that people aren’t ready or willing to open up two-way communication with the entire world.

One of the reasons I had not included robots previously is because I did not feel I understood them well enough. I make it a general practice to not speak about subjects I don’t feel I understand properly.

On to Google Wave Robots.

It helps to think about Wave robots as plugins that interact with other sets of information and return requested information to the Wave. It took me a while to understand that this is what they are. Looking back, the term robot fits perfectly. For some reason I had a hard time understanding what a Wave robot really entailed, and the numorous low-quality, little-purpose Wave robots only served to further compound my confusion.

Now that we understand what Wave robots are, how does this impact us? Are they beneficial, and if so, in what areas?

I personally see a fair bit of use for the enterprise. The ability to call up corporate information via an authorized robot helps balance security and ease of use (not everyone in the meeting may have appropriate permissions to access the requested information). It also adds an efficiency perk to the production of corporate documents.

I don’t see much use for Wave robots outside the enterprise at this point. This is not to question the validity of the service itself, but merely that I believe that using Wave robots will not appeal to the majority of the personal market. People don’t want to sit down and open up a new wave to request information. The psychology of the Wave robots is that they are participants in a conversation. Mentally, initiating a conversation with a robot solely to obtain information breaks the personal aspect. The Wave robot becomes a tool, rather than a participant. Having a conversation with a tool is different than having a conversation with a person.

You also have to take into account that, beyond the psychological aspect, when people are looking for information, it tends to be while mobile. Things like GOOG411 or Google Voice Search are much closer to a conversational interaction than Google Wave in its current stage. I think that Wave as a limited target in the personal market segment.

Again, a similar conclusion to my prior post. If you’re a business, there is lots of potential with Wave robots. If you’re a home user, there is limited use.

This post will not be another review. If you’ve read other reviews, I’m sure you’re aware of the complaints with the noisy nature of the service, and the general usage of it. Rather, I’d like to discuss how Google Wave impacts communications, and whether or not it truly is the replacement for E-mail.

Google Wave is designed to be a collaborative platform. I believe this is one of the reasons it is so hard for many people to grasp. E-mail was designed to be a means of relaying information from one source to others. Google Wave on the other hand, is designed to enable multiple sources to collaboratively produce information. This is why so many people get frustrated with the lack of communication from Google Wave. They are viewing it as a potential source of information, and not being notified of new information. This is also the reason for the complaints of the noisiness of the service. They only want to be notified of new information pertinent to them. They view themselves as recipients of information, but are being added as collaborators. Google Wave was designed for multiple users to produce a single piece of information, and then distribute that piece appropriately. As the service matures, and people begin to use it as intended, much of the noisiness will disappear. Google Wave doesn’t really satisfy many needs in the home user market, hence the negative reception by many bloggers.

Google Wave was designed using the XMPP notification system. This was important for the collaborative nature of the service. However, this brings a host of other functionality to Google Wave. Because of the open nature of XMPP, all sorts of clients can be developed. Imagine working on a document with others via your Instant Messaging client on your mobile device. Or perhaps getting to the office, and receiving an invite to collaborate on a piece of corporate communication inside your document productivity app (Word, Pages, OpenOffice). Or collaborating on an open letter from someone’s webpage. All sorts of uses. Ubiquitous collaboration from anywhere, anything.

If Google Wave fixes collaborative communications, how are these higher quality communications to be delivered? If it is supposed to be an E-mail killer, how do you ensure delivery and notification to the recipients? Expect them to open up Google Wave everytime they sit at their computer? Perhaps… after E-mail is dead. There is a long time between now and no E-mail. I suspect that Google will build in an E-mail delivery system. I’d also venture however, that they are looking to deliver notifications via XMPP to chat clients, or a custom built system tray notification app. Eventually Google Wave and IM will replace E-mail, but not for a long while.

Another aspect I’d suggest they’ll likely bring is trending. Imagine the statistics you could get from something like this. Which users contribute the best quality work, who communicates the most, what was being worked on at a given point in your corporate history. How your internal communications relate to the outside world on services like Twitter. All sorts of things to make a performance analyst’s mouth water.

One final aspect to consider. What will be the cost of this service? There’s a lot of bandwidth and potentially file storage that needs to be covered. My guess is that they will leave the service free for hone users, and sell physical appliances (similar to the Enterprise Google Search box) to the corporate world. I’d also guess they will target the education system. Imagine being a professor, and your students using their school accounts to write notes on your lectures together, and being able to view what they took away.

Google Wave brings anywhere, any-client collaboration to communications. Expect a ‘wave’ of different types of clients. Also expect higher quality internal corporate and education communications. As a home user or blogger, don’t expect too much. There is almost nothing you need here.

Update: One of the arguments surfacing from people, notably Mitchell Baker (the former CEO of the Mozilla Foundation), is that Chrome Frame segregates the browser from the engine. They claim that this will result in the rendering engine storing information in one location, while the browser stores it in another. I’ve been using Chrome Frame of late in IE6, and quite frankly, it appears to me that locally stored information (passwords, security settings, etc) are all managed from the browser. The rendering engine is just that… a rendering engine. A powerhouse that the browser hooks into and does things with. The browser rendering engine merely renders the output of what is given. If there are stored credentials, it pulls them from the browser framework. I think Mitchell Baker’s quotes are misleading.

As you may have heard, Google announced an alpha release of a new plugin for Internet Explorer last week, called Chrome Frame. This announcement stunned me personally, as it changes the concept of compatibility for web developers. Web developers no longer need to necessarily code for the limitations of IE6/IE7. Now they have the option of coding strictly for standards compliancy, as well as taking advantage of HTML 5 features, no matter what browser the end user is using.

This marks a huge turning point in web development. No longer does a web developer have to worry about which browser an end user is using. It is no longer the browser that determines the features on the clientside. The focus has shifted to the rendering engine. Apple has been really pushing this focus for a while with WebKit (the rendering engine in Safari), but Google has now given it the last push. Which rendering engine is currently being used is transparent to the end user. This means that developers are now in control of their applications and sites.

Control. Not only are developers in control of their web apps and sites, but because the Chrome rendering engine is open source, developers as a whole have now been given control over the web. As new features are developed and implemented into the Chrome Frame rendering engine, everyone with the plugin installed will get the updates/new features. I suspect that we’re about to see a large increase in the pace of web development.

I believe that Google will implement a similar plugin for Firefox and/or Safari. The centralization of a single rendering engine must be one of their priorities. (something all web developers would likely support)

Google’s implementation is absolutely beautiful. Transparently transitioning the end user to a fast, standards compliant browsing experience is going to make a lot of developers and end users extremely happy. The fact that they did it using legitmate methods only makes it that much more beautiful.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

A quick look at what ON2 offers brings to focus the fact that they have hardware compression technologies. This is the first piece of the puzzle. A quick look further down the page reveals some of their clients. Of note are Intel and Adobe. Now, what would Intel want to license compression codecs for? Remember their VIIV platform? A hardware platform focused on multimedia? And look at the Adobe client, and a highlight on Flash. I think Google wanted more than just codecs. I think they wanted ON2′s existing agreements and contracts. I think they want to leverage both the IP AND the existing agreements and contracts to develop and promote a hardware platform for YouTube.

Update: Looks like Larry Dignan at ZDnet agrees with me. ZDnet

The other thing I found interesting was that Google Chrome does not even run on Linux yet (at least, no public builds). There is an alpha version for Mac, and a full version on Windows, but no public Linux builds. They have a long way to go on this project.

Another interesting facet that the concept of the web browser as the user interface brings to the game, is that of localized storage. If the only accessible UI is that of the web browser, then what happens when the user does not have access to the internet? Fortunately, HTML 5 brings localized database storage to the web browser. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer 6 & 7 do not support this. Internet Explorer 8 supports it somewhat, and most other web browsers (Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Safari) support it to varying greater extents. This is a boon for web developers. It will help shift the web experience to more standards compliant browsers.

The other option for localized storage is Google Gears, which Google will no doubt push developers to use. I think however, that the majority of developers will choose to go the open standards route, rather than Google’s technology.

That’s my perspective on the ‘web OS’ news this week. Feel free to leave yours in the comments.