For the longest while we’ve been observing Google producing gobs of services and tools. And it’s fairly well known that Google pays and encourages it employees to develop pet projects, with the good ones going into Google Labs. And, curiously, Google has been placing job postings for operating system gurus, making offers so attractive that talented leads, silently frustrated within Microsoft, have left the company and gone to Google — this is happening so much that Microsoft’s CEO is said to have literally thrown a chair and a few explictives. They know they’re in trouble. They feel it.
I like Google!
But all this has led to the community scratching its head. What is Google up to?
At CES 2006, Google introduced the Google Pack, a free set of essential software for the PC. (I wish they’d do one containing OpenSource software for the Macintosh’s OS X.)
But yesterday The Register reported Google may have prematurely tipped it’s hand: they’re working on a Linux Distribution. Today, Google denies it.
Prior to this, leaks happened that Google had its own internal operating system, based on Ubuntu, which was used to manage its search cluster, and rumors that they’d be releasing one. But it never really really felt real that they might actually have a deliberate long term plan. But isn’t that how all the other Google technology snuck up on us? Just appearing overnight, perfect, as if by magic with no prior marketing fanfare?
But looking at the Linux distribution list, do we really need another?
I don’t think making a new distribution is the real goal.
Linux has one major problem: it’s desktop experience for mortal users just sucks compared to commercial platforms like Windows and OS X. I don’t think anyone seriously denies this.
Why is this? I think the reason, I believe, is that installation is too complicated, device detection can be tricky, video is tricky, sound is tricky, plug’n’play is tricky, there’s no real standardization on the desktop, and so forth. And, while anyone with a slightest technical background can get past these bumps virtually unnoticed, you’ll never see someone unfamiliar with computers getting past these problems on their own.
Naturally, there are real reasons for Linux to act the way it does, the primary one being that it wants to support all the hardware it can, while at the same time remain slim and compact by not wasting memory or diskspace for hardware your computer doesn’t have. Good, solid, techincal reasons …but they come at the cost of added complexity and increased user interaction, requiring the end user to know more about the configuration of the machine than other operating systems that don’t care about such things.
To date, no one has really addressed this short comings in a serious, methodical way. Maverick programmers like to develop new code with raw power and functionality, not coddle inexpereinced users with graphical environments to do what can already be done from the command line. Bluntly put, many serious developers just don’t understand where mortal users are coming from, nor how to build a good user interface.
This is where I think Google’s secret plan comes in to play, assuming they even have one. They certainly have the talent to pull it off.
Is it possible to make a fast and beautiful desktop for Unix? Absolutely. Rasterman, a highly talented graphic artist and assembly programmer, stunned the world with Enlightenment as an X-Windows window manager, but that required non-zero skill to make work (and the results were worth it). But, I have to say it is Apple has proved with OS X that it’s possible to put an amazing graphical shell around Unix, in this case FreeBSD, and produce a platform so easy, so stable, so fast, so pretty, and so intuitive to use that a total newbie can be productive shortly after firing up the machine for the first time.
Meanwhile, Microsoft stuggles to keep up.
My prediction?
Google is going to use its many talented resources to solve the Linux Desktop usability problem once and for all.
- Installation will be far easier.
- A new Google desktop will come forth, and it will be brilliant.
- You’ll be able to do multimedia with no more complication that commercial systems.
- Devices like memory sticks and digital cameras will just “work.”
- The operating system will get an overhaul by proven experts.
- It will be free and open.
- Google will make a trusted and tested Linux Google Pack part of the distribution.
- Google will assist in making free browsers, like Mozilla/Firefox, even better.
In short, we’ve seen what Google can do with the web. We’ve seen what Google can do with a platform. Now we’re about to see what happens when Google can enhance, extend, and optimize the platform: new, mind-blowing applications that were never possible before that are finally accessible to everyone.
UPDATE 19-Feb-2006:Â Hmm, check this out… Google is making it’s Windows applications work on Linux.