Murphy's Law: Can Chrome OS Beat Windows? Can Anyone?

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"Why don't more people use Chrome OS?"
It was an innocuous question, part of a grander lunchtime chat about life, the Internet, and The Future Way of Things. My coworker was curious about the benefits of open-source--specifically those advantages with a dollar sign preceding them--and naturally thought that the upstart Google operating system could someday attract a huge portion of Microsoft Windows's market share.
Why wouldn't enterprise businesses love the Google solution? The amount of money they would be able to save from the reduced desktop licensing requirements would be large enough to transform a CFO's eyes into saucers, Roger Rabbit-style. Similarly, entities that rely on a variety of customized programs and applications to conduct business could weave these elements into the open-source architecture of Chrome OS.
Given that Chrome OS is going to be heavily focused toward a Web-based platform for applications and file hosting, it's only fitting that it find a new home in the world of the enterprise--where one doesn't have a desktop PC so much as a virtualized environment that can be accessed using any piece of hardware in the office. A hard drive crash doesn't much matter if your data is sourced on the cloud.
So let's roll out the red carpet and prep the TV hosts for the big unveiling of Chrome OS in big busin... or not. There's one reason, and one reason only, why an open-source desktop isn't going to succeed in the consumer or enterprise markets: Microsoft was there first.


Murphy's Law: Can Chrome OS Beat Windows? Can Anyone? | Maximum PC
 
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