The Google OS Is DoomedFive reasons why the new Chrome operating system is a bad idea.

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Microsoft is a formidable opponent. To appreciate how thoroughly Microsoft dominates the operating-system business, consider that for the last two years, the firm has been selling a product, Windows Vista, that inspired nearly universal derision—an OS that some customers were willing to pay to downgrade from, one whose reputation is so tarnished that Microsoft had to trick people into using it. And you know what? It still sold like gangbusters.

According to the analytics firm Net Applications, Vista gained 24 percent of the OS market over the last couple of years—faster growth than any of its rivals. Windows' total market share—counting all versions—is now at just under 88 percent. This, to be sure, is lower than it has been in the past; just before Vista's release, Windows commanded 93 percent of the market. But that's like pointing out that Tiger Woods didn't win many tournaments when he missed half a season to get knee surgery. Microsoft, long hobbled by Vista, will soon emerge from physical therapy—in October, it will launch Windows 7, a terrific OS that is certain to make up for lost ground.

Computers running the Chrome OS will hit the market many months later. At that point, with Vista's hassles a thing of the past, what will be Google's selling point? Because the search company plans to give Chrome away for free, the stripped-down machines that come with the OS pre-loaded may be cheaper than comparable Windows computers. But the difference will be slight—probably about $50 at the most. That would be a small price to pay for all the extra functionality you'll get from the Windows computer.

Google fails often. It's hard to discount Google; engineers there have a history of shaking up entrenched industries with truly revolutionary software. Look at Gmail, Google Maps, and, obviously, the Google search engine. At the same time, the company often seems to launch products for no clear reason other than because other people are doing it—and these efforts flail. Knol, Google's take on Wikipedia, is useless. So was Lively, Google's now-shuttered virtual world. And to say that Orkut, its social network, is very popular in Brazil and India is to damn it with faint praise.

Even when Google does make very good products, it has had trouble leveraging its search-engine dominance into other ventures. Google Video was great—but the company had to buy YouTube to get anywhere in the online-video market. Google Checkout is wonderful, but its presence hasn't hurt PayPal. Chrome is just about the best browser you can download, and it's the only product that Google has ever advertised on TV. Fewer than 2 percent of Web surfers use it.

The Chrome OS makes no business sense. It's no surprise that Google plans to give away its new OS for free; Google gives away nearly everything for free. That's because it makes pornographic amounts of money from a single product, Web ads, and can afford to dally in any other business venture it chooses, whether or not those efforts hold out any promise of profits. (See YouTube.)

Sometimes there's a logic to this. It made sense for Google to create its own mobile phone OS, for instance, because there were few great operating systems that would deliver the Web to phones—and Google's future depends on the Internet being available everywhere, all the time. Thus you can think of Google's investment in Android as a kind of loss leader—it gives away the OS for free in the hope that billions of people around the world will one day use Android-like phones to click on ads at the gym.

But the Chrome project is unencumbered by any such rationale. If 20 percent of the world's computer users switched from Windows to Chrome, would that help Google's bottom line? Sure, all those people would now be using Gmail and Google Docs—but they could have been doing that in Windows, too! An MBA might describe the Chrome OS as a wasteful customer acquisition expense; Google would be wiser to use all the cash that it's pouring into developing the new program for advertising instead. But a gangster would call this move what it really is: The point of Chrome OS—the only point of Chrome OS—is to screw with Microsoft.

And that's fine. When you've got money to burn, why not? Microsoft often does things for no reason other than to frustrate its rivals—its new search engine Bing being a prime example. But by focusing so much attention on a venture that's unlikely to do the company any good, Google will only hurt itself.

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Farhad Manjoo is Slate's technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society. You can e-mail him at and follow him on Twitter.

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