One of the greatest mysteries to me is the concept of there being a prize for winning the browser war. The story was the greatest of the first Internet boom – Microsoft, spurred by Bill Gates’ Pearl Harbor memo, gunning down Netscape and ‘winning’ the browser war.
But what exactly did Microsoft win? An advantage for their search engine? At most, a few mistyped domains translating into a few extra queries and a couple of million of users who forgot to turn off the msn.com default homepage. Simply, the prize was small change. Second or third rate compared to the riches of say search marketing’s rivers of gold.
And so it is that I look on with complexity at Chrome OS. I get the browser economics. You can make a very nice business from a successful browser. Embarrassingly for the non-profit Mozilla, they make a little too much. Google similarly mightn’t have to pay HP or Dell a $1 for each computer they install Google’s toolbar by default. But let’s get real: This is about ego.
Eric Schmidt, a.k.a Squirrel Boy, has spent his entire career getting bitch-slapped around by Microsoft, first at Sun and then at Novell and now he is in a position to inflict damage. My problem isn’t that there isn’t a positive in Google pursuing a OS/Browser strategy, it’s just that the majority of the effort seems to be about the negative it can inflict on Microsoft’s entrenched territory in Windows. And that seems more about Eric Schmidt than Google.
