How Google will Fumble Chrome OS

Much like Microsoft was with projects like Zune (and Netscape was with its attempt at an enterprise offering) Google appears unwilling – and possibly incapable – of doing what needs to be done to make Chrome a success.

Google will undoubtedly force market changes by both Apple and Microsoft that are likely long overdue. Yet also like Netscape, Google hasn’t done the groundwork to assure it will benefit from these changes and, instead, may have laid the foundations for its own demise. We won’t go that far in this writing, but unless something changes dramatically at Google the Chrome OS will fail.

There are four things you should look for in a strong challenger to a dominant offering: 1) a good strategy, which Google has, 2) an ability (both skills and resources) to convince people to try something new and hold them once they try it, 3) an ability to focus on the task at hand, and 4) the capability with partners to build enough trust to displace the dominant vendor.

We’ll take each in turn.

Strategy

Google’s goal is to effectively remove the foundation that sustains Microsoft, and that foundation is Windows and Internet Explorer.

Microsoft has made serious strategic errors with both products over the last 15 years. With Windows they forgot that it was a keystone product, effectively a razor to their tools and applications business blade, and treated it like an application rather than an operating system.

Microsoft’s strategy with Windows: Growing it in relative price and complexity and building in components that otherwise might have been separately sold, products that were often incomplete and not particularly competitive.

This strategy allowed the groups working on these components to have modest goals that they could more easily achieve. But it left the market with an expensive mess. In addition, the critical PC OEM base and end users were not pleased with the result. It did create a rather impressive windfall for Apple, which couldn’t take full advantage because they were vertically integrated.

IE became one of these underfunded and under-marketed components and is currently in freefall in terms of market share, even though IE 8 is actually vastly improved.

It too is a razor product, but because it doesn’t generate revenue by itself it isn’t resourced to a level that allows it to defend its turf, either with marketing or development focus. IE is at high risk of being trivialized this decade.

Finally, both Windows and IE are largely based on core concepts that existed prior to this decade. These concepts include non-pervasive network connections and the belief that running applications locally is superior to SAAS offerings.

The EU is now forcing Microsoft down a path that should assure the company can’t fully update their products. And Microsoft is simply not yet structured to move to a SAAS revenue model.

Google’s Chrome OS is focused on Microsoft’s mistakes and inability to correct them quickly. It is a very good strategy.

Behavior Change – Marketing

Apple has demonstrated that even when the dominant vendor is having substantial problems it takes a lot of effort to get customers to consider alternatives. Its aggressive campaign designed to point out the faults, often in excess, with Windows has allowed it to gain nearly three times the market share they started the decade with. It has done this while maintaining some of the highest margins and growth rates in the segment.

Google can’t market. Like a lot of engineering companies they appear to subscribe to the “we will build it and they will come” method of marketing incompetence.

At the recent HTC launch of the latest version of the Android phone, Google didn’t even bother to show up. This mistake has been common with Microsoft and component manufacturers as well. Many seem to hold the belief that marketing is the responsibility of the business partner, and because they give their OS away for free, much like Microsoft does with IE, they don’t fund marketing.

Microsoft’s Plays for Sure effort was another example of this mistake and it isn’t uncommon in the industry. But it will likely remove approximately 90% of their available market opportunity.