Battle of the behemoths

This editorial was published recently by the New York Times:

There is a kind of bloodthirsty thrill in learning that Google plans to develop a personal computer operating system to compete with Microsoft Windows.

We like competition, especially in a market that Microsoft has so thoroughly dominated since the dawn of the PC. What makes this battle all the more interesting is both the scale of the companies involved and the extraordinary differences in their ways of going about business. For all its size — and its occasional arrogance — Google still retains a willingness to experiment and risk failure in many directions at once. Microsoft, on the other hand, is unbelievably tenacious and holds an almost insuperable lead in market share.

When Microsoft offered its first operating system, MS-DOS, the Internet did not exist. And later, Microsoft was slightly behind when it came to understanding its importance. Microsoft's most serious legal troubles arose from the effort to tie its Web browser, Internet Explorer, directly to its operating system. But Google's new operating system, called Chrome OS, grows directly out of its browser, also called Chrome, which was introduced last year. What makes that browser distinctive is its ability to open separate Web pages almost as if they were independent programs — that, and its Google-like way of distributing ads and gathering data.

Both Google and Microsoft are aiming for the emerging — and already potent — market for netbooks, small, nimble computers that are really the only fast-sellers in the slowing world of PC sales. With luck, that will mean a small, nimble operating system.

A Google official has emphasized the need for "speed, simplicity and security." We would like to emphasize the need for security. Unlike Microsoft, Google believes that software — and vast chunks of our data — belong on the Internet, not on our PCs.

Much as we look forward to Chrome OS, we look forward to even stronger guarantees that Google's new operating system — indeed its entire operating ethos — will not compromise our security or our privacy, which, on the Internet, add up to pretty much the same thing.